My favourite easy advent calendar

I'm going to share with you an advent calendar I've made many times, and it's great as you can easily change it to make any shape you like! This is a great activity for kids (and big kids) and you can make it for yourself or as a great gift for a loved one!

All you need is:

1 cereal/pizza box for the base, 

around 4 empty kitchen roll tubes (or you can make rings with other card)

1 newspaper torn into strips around 2cm x 5cm

1 jar of wallpaper paste or other glue

1 sheet of tissue paper
Lots of sweets!!!

You'll need to make it in at least 2 sessions with time to dry in between.

First you need to cut the kitchen rolls into pieces around 2.5cm long, or if you're using card cut strips 2.5cm by 15cm then tape them into a ring. 

TIP: You can make some of the rings bigger if you want to fit some bigger sweets in! :-)

Then arrange your rings onto the base into whatever shape you like then stick them down with some strips of paper and glue/paste. Some good shapes are a christmas tree, snowman, I once even did a VW van for my boyfriend!!

TIP: If you're using wallpaper paste you can clean out a jam jar then fill it with water and add 1 tablespoon of the powder and mix, this way you can store it for weeks!

Keep securing the rings with the strips then cover the gaps in between the rings with strips till it looks a little bit like this:

Cut the base card into the shape you like and you can keep adding paper mache until you get the shape you want.

TIP: You can use pieces of folded card to add extra corners/points or scrunched up paper for balls/curves, just cover it all in a layer of paper mache.

You'll have to leave this to dry for about a day.....which give you plenty of time to buy all the sweets or gifts you can fit into the holes!

TIP: Get a range of sweets so you can fit a few different sweets into every day. You can also put some small gifts in, some good ones are a keyring / jewellery / small toy / money.

When it's dry you can paint inside the different sections or you can get straight to filling the holes with your sweets. Then glue the tissue paper over the top making sure it's stuck all the way around the holes.

Now you can paint and decorate to your hearts content! I like to glue on some glitter and a bit of tinsel for extra sparkle.

Now's the hard bit - wait until December. Then you, or your loved one, can enjoy a totally unique and personalised treat every day!