Annual Christmas Project

Apparently, I’ve started a new tradition – one that I’m happy to continue hosting. This year’s Christmas Art Project was making an Advent Calendar with candy canes! Last year, we made ornaments out of Scrabble tiles.

I had some trouble with supplies this time. I didn’t want to use a wooden board for the base, so after much thought I ended up with a large piece of matt that is used to frame pictures.

The place I bought it at would not cut it for me (it’s a liability issue, supposedly) so my next hurdle was trying to figure out how to cut it. Thankfully Bryan has a 4-foot long straight edge, so I was able to reduce a 3’-0”x4’-0” piece of white matt down to (4) 18”x9” pieces. My intent was to glue two of them together, giving it more stability for the end product.

Once I had my pieces glued together, I then had to figure out how to deal with the holes we would need. There were several issues there: first – how big should the holes be? What is the circumference of a Candy Cane? Did you know there is no set standard for candy canes? Manufacturers can make any size they want, willy-nilly. I decided I’d go with a ¼” hole and just hope the candy canes would fit. My next hurdle on this issue was just how exactly was I to CUT the holes? I called on Bryan for this task, and he tried numerous different techniques. He finally ended up with a hammer & awl and spent a good half hour pounding away in his shop.

While he did that, I got my Big Shot out and cut letters for their names. I like to layer three die cuts on top of each other, giving the final product more umph, so also had to glue them all. And I didn’t know what color they’d choose, so I made each name twice – once red, and once green. That means… hmm… let’s do some math here… two names, two colors, three die cuts for each letter of their names… the total escapes me at the moment. Suffice to say, it was a lot of letters.

But – when the girls got here, we were ready to assemble our masterpieces! They did so good – I am so impressed with them! As it turns out, the candy canes that Heather got did NOT fit in the holes Bryan provided, so we had to come up with an alternative method of attaching them. Which made our little project that much harder to do! It lasted a good three hours instead of the one I had planned on.

Note to self: next year, provide snacks! Three hours is a long time for little girls to go without food – particularly when creating a Candy Cane Advent Calendar!