Matchbox Advent Tutorial

I wanted to create an alternative Advent style gift for one of my children and decided to use matchboxes as they are the perfect size to hide a tiny daily treat!

To create your own Christmas Advent Matchbox Cabinet you will need to gather together the following supplies -

24 small matchboxes 

One 12x12 sheet of Christmas themed patterned paper
24 metal brads
Christmas themed Chipboard pieces
8 inches of 1 inch wide spotted ribbon to coordinate with your papers
Rik Rak in coordinating colours
Two 4x4inch squares of thick chipboard or mount board 

Number rubons or you can use stamps
Acrylic paint to coordinate
Black doodling pen 

Strong double sided tape
Wet Adhesive

Using a strong double sided tape, I adhered three match boxes one on top of another until I had eight stacks in total – this gives 24 drawers – perfect for my advent themed project. 

Acrylic paint was used to cover all areas, including the inside of the drawers.

Whilst waiting for the paint to dry I covered two pieces of chipboard, measuring 4 x 4 inches, with patterned paper.

Once the matchbox towers were dry I started to assemble my matchbox cabinet. 
Its best to sit the boxes in place and check they are in the right direction before adhereing to the base. 
The matchbox towers need to sit as shown in the diagram below.

They should end up looking something like this -




Once you are happy with their position adhere all boxes in place using a strong adhesive. This will form the body of your cabinet. 
Alternating the direction in which the boxes sit on the chipboard base gives space for decorative paper, photographs or embellishments to be added to the project.

I covered another 4x4 inch piece of chipboard with patterned paper. To decorate, I cut two lengths of ribbon 4inches long and tied them together forming a decorative knot.

The lose ends were then adhered to the underneath of the mountboard using double sided tape and additional embellishments added.

This decorated chipboard piece is then adhered to the top of the stacked match boxes to form a lid. 

Brads and ribbon were used to create “handles” by threading the brads through the Rik Rak before attaching to the "drawer" fronts.

I used off cuts of paper to form drawer liners. 
Using rubons I was able to number each drawer and I used a fine line black pen to add doodled stitching. Numbers could be added using small stamped images.

This tower of small drawers makes a perfect alternative to the more traditional advent calendar, but could also be used as a decorative storage solution for your tiny treasures.

Copyright - Christmas Advent – Tracie Hudson©2007 for Bubbly Funk

Have fun.
T.x.