Crafty Inspiration - Advent Chocolate Box

Back in 2013, Teejay and I decided to do something different and fun for our Christmas gifts for each other. Our plan was to create some sort of advent box with little presents that would be opened each day in December until Christmas day for a total of 24 little gifts.

For today's post, I'm showing you the advent box that I created for Teejay. My idea was to make what looked like a fancy box of chocolates but inside each "bonbon" Teejay would find a bracelet, earrings or beads, etc.

I found most of what I needed at The Container Store and Hobby Lobby. The Container Store had exactly the kind of pretty gold box that I was hoping to use. They also had inexpensive clear plastic containers that came in packages of twelve. I think they were under $2.00 per package and I needed two. At Hobby, I found the paper candy liners and also the foil papers for wrapping my "candies".

I used double-stick tape to secure the brown paper cups to the bottom of the box. I was going to be mailing this to England and I didn't want Teejay to find everything in a jumble by the time it got there. After wrapping the "chocolates", I taped those into the bottom of the paper cups.

At first I tried just wrapping a square of the foil around one of the little containers but the top looked very flat and not much like a bonbon at all. To fix that, I placed a cotton ball on top of each container before covering it with foil. That made the shape more like real chocolates. I didn't want to spoil the look that I'd created so I didn't number them with the days of the month like a regular advent calendar. Instead I let Teejay just choose one at random to open each day.

I found the pretty label image online and added my own fancy text in the blank area in the center. I also used the same background image to make the insert that Teejay would see when she first opened the box.

You can download the beautiful blank label image from The Graphics Fairy HERE. She also has the same frame in pink and lilac, HERE and HERE. Below are my two labels, which you can use if you like.

My Advent Box from Teejay

These are the advent boxes that Teejay sent me. She made 24 tiny gift boxes and placed them inside two very practical storage boxes with dividers. I use those handy plastic boxes to store bracelets that I've made.

In the close-up below, you can see how Teejay attached the gift tags to each tiny present. The beads that decorate each tag are ones that she used to make the bracelet inside the present. Teejay actually made 24 bracelets for me. I cheated a bit with her advent box by filling a few of the containers with charms and other beading supplies.