Christmas Tree Countdown

Alright, it's Black Friday, and now I can officially welcome in the Christmas season!  I try to save my Christmas celebrations for the day after Thanksgiving.  So now that my favorite time of year is here... bring it on!    

  

Anticipating a special occasion is half the fun--am I right?!  I think I own at least 3 Christmas advent calendars--so you will see more ideas!  But today I want to share the tutorial for making my latest and greatest countdown.

Come along with me and see how I made this sweet lil' Christmas tree countdown!

I had the opportunity to decorate this Christmas tree from Say It With Letters.  There is something about unfinished wood that is so exciting to me--all those possibilities!  I was so excited when this package arrived in the mail!

As soon as I saw this tree, I knew I needed to go shopping at my local scrapbook store.  I cut strips of the new My Mind's Eye Christmas paper and used my Fiskars scallop punch on some of the strips.  I overlapped the paper strips and mod-podged all of the paper onto the tree. I covered both sides of the tree and even the edges.  Then, I trimmed it all up.  I even sanded the edges so there were no sharp paper edges.

I decided that this tree needed some BLING.  I gave the tree a thick coat of mod podge and started dumping on the glitter!  Next, I added red sparkly ribbon and green sparkly ribbon stripes.  This little tree definitely shines!

I decided that it would be fun to use this tree to count down the days until Christmas.  So I found some glittery snowflakes at Hobby Lobby and used E-6000 to secure magnets to the back of each snowflake.  

Using my Cricut, I added vinyl numbers to the snowflakes so we could count down the days until Christmas!  You could also use paper numbers.  

Using chipboard letters, I made the "days" sign, mounted on more scrapbook paper.  I also distressed the edges.

I just glued 2 magnet tape squares onto the tree so that the snowflake numbers would stick.  Then I topped the tree with a big red ribbon bow.

I glued these fun epoxy buttons all over the front and back of the tree as ornaments.  (This is the back side.)

I found this cute star box and spray painted it red.  Then I mod-podged paper and ribbon around the box's edges.  Now I can use this box to hold the extra snowflake numbers!  I am excited to start counting down the days until Christmas!  Here are a few close-ups:

I can't wait to see all of the fun Christmas crafts this year!!  

Merry Christmas!!