Baking Tray Advent Calendar

I have seen baking tray Advent calendars so many times while Googling,  but it wasn’t my intention to make one when I first started this project…… the idea in my head was for a bingo card on a bingo board! I first put the number sheet together in Publisher using my “Little Joys” digi set by Zoe Pearn from Sweet Shoppe Designs but as the idea changed, so did the proportions of the sheet! Aghhh

I wanted to use decorated magnets to cover up the numbers but I hadn’t thought it through properly as I had nothing for the magnets to stick to!  When it finally dawned on me that my original idea wasn’t going to work,  I suddenly remembered the Poundshop baking tray I had squirreled away and immediately set about spraying it white with car paint, bought from a local market  for a pound.

 

Next, I found some old buttons and proceeded to stick small magnets on the back, but it soon became obvious how dull they looked and the white spaces at the side of the calendar looked pants too.

So I raided my Christmas button box and replaced some original buttons with the large snowflake ones and then added the smaller snowflakes to the remaining buttons, and flat backed gems to the centres. All this chopping and changing was getting on my nerves, but I preserved and I was beginning to get somewhere. My next hurdle was how to fill in white spaces…….

…… which I did with quite a well matching 12 x 12 paper which has tiny stars on. I cut it into shaped strips to fit down the sides and added a few punched snowflakes to go with the snowman theme and was thrilled with the end result….. which I had to finish off with a bit of faux stitching on the tray rim.

….. but this is nothing like the idea I first had in my head!