I consider myself something of a football widow. I know many of you out there know just what I mean. Football season starts, and our hubbies set up camp in front of the TV. Honestly, I don’t mind. He’s doing what he wants, and that frees up time for me to do more of what I want. What do I want to do? Really? You have to ask? I want to CRAFT! The average football game is 2–3 hours long. With the premium sports channels, watching all of the games together can take an entire afternoon. That gives me lots of time to work on my projects!
The new Envelope Punch Board is one of my favorite new tools. If I don’t have my Undefined Stamp Carving Kit carving tools in my hand, it’s because I’m punching out the cutest envelopes on the planet. Check out the advent calendar I made using the Season of Style Designer Series Paper! As I said, the cutest envelopes on the planet!
The Envelope Punch Board was so easy to use as I sat on the couch next to my football fanatic and made all of my envelopes. I went with the 3″ x 4″ envelope size because it requires a 6″ x 6″ piece of paper—which is an awfully convenient size when working with 12″ x 12″ Designer Series Paper! I also used two sheets of 12″ x 12″ Crumb Cake Cardstock to break up the pattern and get a little stamping onto the banner.
I want this advent calendar to be reusable, so I used some scraps of Cherry Cobbler and Old Olive Cardstock to punch out 1/2″ circles (with the 1/2″ Circle Punch) to make my closures.
I used a pencil to mark where the closures should be adhered, then pierced holes for the Silver 1/8″ Mini Brads using my Paper-Piercing Tool. I used a small amount of Multipurpose Glue to glue the envelope together, then wrapped 6″ of Cherry Cobbler Baker’s Twine between the circle closures to close it.
The steps up to this point took me about an hour and a half. I didn’t really want to spend the rest of the afternoon stamping the numbers for my advent calendar, so I used MDS to create the little numbered flags. (I’ve included the flags PDF here.)
After printing my flags, I joined my hubby back on the couch and went to town cutting out the flags and curling them a bit with my Bone Folder before attaching them to the envelopes with more Multipurpose Adhesive.
The final step was stringing all of the envelopes together with more Cherry Cobbler Baker’s Twine to make two banners. I chose to string them into two separate banners so they didn’t take up an entire wall!
I’m a fan of advent calendars that come with sweet treats inside. These envelopes don’t allow for much to be stuffed inside, so I’m going to think of fun activities that we can do together all month long and put a notecard inside each envelope.
What fun activities do you do when your significant other is watching football?
Melody H.
Concept Artist
