I had the honor of contributing this DIY Christmas bulb advent calendar to the holiday issue of Sister Mag magazine, a German publication from some of my favorite ladies. I’ve contributed before (here… my hair!!!!) and this time I was in the company of a few other artists from around the world with an advent calendar idea.
This one is super easy to make, especially if you have a craft cutting machine, and I love hanging it in our office right now.
See below for the full tutorial! 
DIY Christmas bulb advent calendar
Materials:
- template
- scissors
- craft knife
- glue
- paper in various bright shades (size A4) and black
- twine
- ruler
- numbered flags template
- hole punch
Instructions:
- Cut out the two templates (the black topper and the colored bottom)
- Score the lines indicated with the dotted lines with the craft knife.
- Bring the sides together and glue the tab to the inside.
- Cut a piece of twine 6″ long and string through the holes at the top and bring all the sides together and tie.
- Bend the top tabs outward.
- Glue the black paper together and glue to the top of the tabs.
- Cut the twine pieces off.
- Cut out the numbered flags and punch
- String the bulbs together, inserting a numbered flag before the bulb.
Now you can hang your advent calendar anywhere in your home! Time to count down the days until Christmas! See more pictures and holiday crafts below!
Check out the full issue of Sister Mag.
More holiday crafts
Now you know how to make an advent calendar for the year, but what about decorating the rest of your home? We’ve got you covered here at Lars with so many different holiday crafts and tutorials. Check out these colorful candy lights to match your colorful bulb garland. We also have a washi tape tutorial for decorating your walls for the holidays. Looking for creative ways to wrap your gifts this year? We have holiday gift topper tutorials here and here. Plus, we have wrapping paper in the shop and tutorials for how to make your own gift bags! Check out the Lars shop for gift ideas as well. There are some great stocking stuffer ideas for all of your friends and family!
Hello, I just purchased the template and will be using my Cricut to cut out the shape, what size are you using?
They are sized at 100% right now so it should be good to go!
Hello
I bought the template for the lovely lightbulb advent calendar, and printed it. The problem is, the template I was sent, was without the top tabs? I’m making two advent calendars, one for my brother and one for my cousin, so I bought paper enough for 48 lightbulbs, and just cut Them ALL out, only to find out, that I can’t finish it now due to the missing top tabs. I have nothing to attach to the Black top part 🙁 i just wasted time and money on this project due to a faulty template, and i don’t have enough paper to start over, which is pretty sad :/
A little late, but here’s a possible solution: the string you use to tie the 5 sides together, make it longer. If you leave yourself two long ends after tying the sides together, you can then maybe pass them through the black topper and tie them to the long string that all the bulbs are hanging on. It’s probably not ideal, but better than starting over and wasting all that nice paper.
You’d also have the bonus advantage that these would suddenly be reusable if you just replace the string. For me, these were A LOT of work to make by hand, so I wanted to make mine in a way that doesn’t use glue to combine the two parts, thus ruining them when you take them down. I used little Velcro dots on the inside of the black toppers and outside of the bulbs, but string can also work.
Hope you make it work, good luck!
Hmm that’s nice . I got it right without using the template .
How does one go about opening the advent calendar bulb without ruining the actual string of lights? Or is this suppose to slowly go down to one bulb at the end of the month? Would be nice not to destroy the whole thing while still accessing the daily treats.