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!

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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!

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Will you be trying this DIY?

Thanks so much for stopping by to read my Not-So-Secret Diary!

xx,

Beth