DIY Rustic Advent Calendar

I picked up this box of goodies at a church sale with no idea what I was going to do with them.

Once Christmas planning and decorating started in our home, I brought these out and thought they would be great to use for our Advent calendar this year.

Someone had hot glued plastic apples to all of these place card holders. This first thing I did was remove the apples from the holders. This was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Then, I spray painted all the holders black. I found an old board in our garage that was the perfect size and used construction adhesive to put the holders on the board.

I painted the board a light gray and distressed it a little bit too. Once the card holders were in place, I made small cones from burlap to fit inside them.

All Advent calendars need numbers so I used these "window markers" on the burlap cones. I bought earring backs to use on the back of these "tacks" so they would stay in place.

They worked great!

I love making homemade Advent calendars every year. Come see what I plan to fill the burlap cones with and all the other details (including links to similar products so you can make your own) on my blog post: http://www.mycreativedays.com/diy-rustic-advent-calendar/

Original article and pictures take http://www.hometalk.com/11366239/diy-rustic-advent-calendar site