24-Pack Advent Calendar

Need a funny hostess gift for your Thanksgiving celebration? This project idea made me laugh when I read about it a few years ago, and I have been wanting to give it a try.

Materials needed:

• 24-pack of beer or soda in cans
• Acrylic paint
• Cardstock
• Compass and scissors or a circle paper cutter
• X-acto or other craft knife
• Glue

Instructions:

1. Choose a case of a canned beverages. You are looking for a flat case with 6 rows containing 4 cans each.
2. Paint the box. I kept it simple with red acrylic paint. My friend at Nido Art Studio suggested using Gesso first, but we didn’t have any available at the time, so I just used 4 coats. In retrospect, a trip the the art supply store would have ended up taking less time and would have left the box a little less weakened and more covered.
3. Carefully cut the doors using an X-acto or other craft knife.  This was tricky. I started at the bottom and used a can as my guide to determine where the cans inside were likely to be resting. I cut three sides of a 2 1/4-inch square for each door, leaving about a centimeter between each square. This took a long time, and I feel like I really lucked out that all the doors were not only uniform, but also were in the right places for easy can removal when the recipient opens the doors.  

4. Apply a small piece of transparent tape to each door to keep it shut. Make sure you do this before you attach the decorations to the doors so that the tape ends up being hidden.    
5. Cut circles from cardstock. They should be roughly the same size as the cans – my circles were about 6 cm in diameter. I chose 3 shades of green for my circles. Glue one circle to each door.    
6. Number the circles. I tried printing numbers on white cardstock and then attaching those to the doors, but I didn’t like the way the second layer of paper looked. I decided to just go with a Sharpie and hand-number each door. My penmanship is not great, but I still liked it better than the computer-generated numbers. 
7. Stick a bow on it and present the Advent calendar to a worthy recipient. Starting on the first day of December, open one door per day and enjoy the contents.