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Back To School Advent Calendar

August 3, 2016 - By Emma 5 Comments

Today’s contributor is Emma from Crafting{E}! All posts written by Emma for Make It and Love It, can be found HERE.

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Hello everyone!! It’s Emma from Crafting{E}!

I am so EXCITED to share this project with you today! I’ll admit… I’m kind of proud of myself for coming up with this idea out of the blue. Introducing: the Back To School Advent Calendar. It’s kind of super adorable ;)

I am one of those people who likes to celebrate EVERYTHING… like, not even kidding (I celebrate my half birthday every year). I really like to make things feel special and fun, even if they aren’t necessarily special and fun (ahem… school.)

It might seem silly that I celebrate all these little things, but I’ve found that it gives me something to look forward to during the not-so-fun times. This back-to-school advent calendar is one of my attempts to make something feel fun that (at least for me) is not fun.

For those of you who don’t know, I am going to be a junior in high school this year. I am REALLY not looking forward to it, but it’s things like this that help me to get a tiny bit excited. I made these advent calendars for my younger sisters and they LOVE them!

These “composition books” are actually patterned paper bags from the craft store. Cute, right? Inside each of these bags is a fun *cheap* little item. Most of the things I put in were school supplies. The awesome part is that school supplies are super cheap right now, so this won’t cost very much. The total project cost $8 and I even have extra supplies left over!

For those of you who are curious here’s what I put in mine: sticky notes, pencils, patterned pencils, highlighters, random colorful necklaces that cost a couple bucks, dry erase markers, and pencil top erasers. The items really don’t have to cost much, but it’s so fun to get a little something everyday, don’t you think?

I’m seriously kind of in love with this project. Why don’t we make advents for every event in the year?

MATERIALS:

Patterned paper bags (I found the red and blue ones at Michael’s and the yellow ones online)
Items to put inside the bags (I found all of mine at Walmart)
Printable composition labels and “bindings” (you can download the files I designed at the end of this post)
OPTIONAL: Something to hang the bags up with. You can either get put some clothespins on a piece of string or (do what I did) buy the same thing from the Target dollar section for $3.
Glue or double sided tape
Scissors

DIRECTIONS:

First, print out the composition labels and bindings (a link to download the files is at the very end of this post). The number of pages you print out will depend on how many days you do the advent calendar. We decided to do it the week before school, so we only needed to print one page.

Cut out the labels and bindings.

Fold the bindings hot dog style.

Unfold the bindings and put tape or glue along both sides on the inside.

Place the binding on the edge of the left side of the bag. See the picture:

then fold the top of the bag over to the back side so it resembles a composition notebook

Put glue or tape on the back side of the composition labels and place it onto the bag.

Then, open the bag up and fill it with one of your items.

Next, fold the top back over and secure it with a piece of tape.

That’s it! You have a cute little composition book. If you are going to hang the bags up you can do that now (bonus, these make a cute decoration). Repeat all the steps until you complete all of your bags!