Matchbox Advent Calendar with CTMH

Perhaps you've seen those cute advent calendar's floating around on Pinterest? Maybe you've even seen the tutorial at Split Coast Stampers? Yes it's those cute matchbox-dresser style calendar's!

When I saw them, I fell in love, and was possessed by the desire to make one as soon as possible! I had, however, just completed making one of these beauties from this season's CTMH Workshops on the Go.

Even I probably don't need 2 adorable, freshly made advent calendar's in one year. Luckily my sister-in-law happened to mention how much fun having one of them would be, AND they were in town over American Thanksgiving! I could totally pull this off, and have it done in time to send home with them.

This is what I came up with:

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out! I simply followed the basic directions from the SCS tutorial (see link above) but instead of using the die they mentioned, I cut my boxes using the Artiste Cricut Cartridge from Close To My Heart. In fact ALL the cardstock, paper, stamps, brads, ribbon and so forth are from CTMH except the cardboard (from some random packaging I had laying around), a tiny circle punch from the dollar bin at Michaels, and the glue I happened to use is Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive. I like it because it dries so quickly and has a super fine pointy nozzle that has never clogged on me yet!

For the boxes I used my Gypsy to size and position the cuts just right on the mat. I sized them to 2.9 and was able to get either six inner boxes or six box wraps from each sheet of cream cardstock. I didn't cut the decorative papers until after I had the chest pretty much made and assembled, so I could make them to measure for my version of the chest.

Here are the tools and materials I used:

Tools:
Cricut Expression
Gypsy
Bone Folder
Trimmer with scoring blade and cutting blade
Small circle punch
Paper piercer and mat
Small number stamps (I used ones from the Nov SOTM - Capture the Date)
Clear stamp block
Stamp scrubber
Ruler (for adding gold edges)

Materials:
8 Pieces of Colonial White Cardstock
3 different coordinating B&T papers (the ones I used are retired CTMH papers)
Cardboard (approx 6" x 6")
Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive
Gold marker
Shimmery Ribbon
White poinsettia embellishments (retired)
Colonial White Brads (24)
Desert Sand ink (use whatever coordinates with your papers)
Stamp cleaning spray
Glue dots

I THINK that's everything!
If you have any questions or comments I'd love to hear from you.