Dear Diary,
I’ve always been a Christmas lover & I love to have a countdown!
I’ve seen such cute advent calendars & Christmas countdowns this year, but as always, they are insanely expensive. So you know what that means…I took a trip to the Dollar Tree to create my own!
Supplies: (All from Dollar Tree unless otherwise noted)
-Cookie Sheet
-Red Pom-Poms
-Garland
-Magnet
-Paint (Walmart)
-Paint brushes
-Hot glue
Directions:
I started by creating these little dots around the cookie sheet to appear as though there are nails or something. I thought this gave it a more high-end look and less like a cookie sheet. Next, I painted the whole tray white.
After the white dried, I used a bit of gray paint to create some texture on the tray. I just took a sponge brush and went up and down in a stroking motion. If it looked too extreme, I just went back in with some white to tone it down.
While the tray was drying again, I took one of these magnets and painted it green. This is a step I decided to do to make everything blend together a bit more.
I then took a piece of this garland (I’ve seriously been using this garland for so many DIYs!) & wrapped it around to look like a mini wreath! I then hot glued it in place.
I hot glued the mini red pom-poms onto the wreath to look like berries.
After the wreath & the magnet dried, I hot glued the magnet to the bath of the wreath.
I decided to be ambitions & freehand my writing, but you could also use stencils or print something off to trace.
I chose to do the numbers in a green & red pattern so everything didn’t look the same color.
This step is totally optional, but I felt like I left a pretty big gap in between the lettering & numbers, so I needed some glitter! To get these perfect lines, I taped down double stick tape under the lettering & dumped glitter all over it. Then I dumped the excess glitter & got this perfect stripe!
The last this to do was put my wreath on! You could either use it as a countdown or put the wreath on that day of the month. I love how the number peaks through the wreath!
This DIY definitely isn’t perfect, but I love the simplicity & home-made feeling. It would also be a lot more clean if I didn’t free-hand it all, but I’m thrilled with the outcome.
I made this DIY for only $4!!! I already had the paint, brushes & glue. If you didn’t have those things, it would still be under $10!
Will you be trying this DIY?
Thanks so much for stopping by to read my Not-So-Secret Diary!
xx,
Beth
