Advent Calendar with My Thoughts Exactly - October Stamp Release!

I am soo excited to finally share my project with you all - and welcome to the My Thoughts Exactly stamp release partaaay!  Well, don't know if others are partying, but I sure feel like it - I LOVE LOVE LOVE these stamps, and I love the way my project turned out and just couldn't wait to share it!

So, as I briefly mentioned about them before when I used them for my Halloween Doorhangers project, the two new sets that were release this month was the following:

Fright Night Phrases





































Ghostly Greetings







































Aren't they the best stamps ever?!?!?!  I love how you can mix and match and you can pretty much come up with any Halloween saying with these two sets.  You can get them for $15 each or can purchase the bundle for $25!  What a great deal!  (and yes, taxes and shipping both included!)

Okay, so I wanted to get as much stamping as possible in this project - and so decided to create a Halloween advent calendar.  I have seen many different ways of doing the calendar, but so far, I've only seen one with the doors that open and is in a box, like the ones you open up the chocolate calendars for Christmas.  This file I'm referring to is from SVGCuts' Classic Christmas Advent Calendar SVG Kit.  If you know which file I'm talking about, the only problem with this is that this is a Christmas calendar, so it only counts down 25 days...  Hmmm.. that is a problem.  I contemplated on various things that I can do, including adding an extra box at the side, but then I had this A HA! moment!  I could break apart/ungroup the doors on the original file, rearrange it (replace smaller doors in the place of a bigger door) - and I was able to fit in 31 days!!!

Here's the advent calendar - isn't it gorgeous?



So, I'll show ya what I'm talking about - Here's the original file:



...and after manipulating the doors, this is what I ended up with.



(the numbers correspond to the dates on the original file)

So, in order to assemble this box, you would have to change the compartment boxes too and use the ones corresponding to the right doors you've replaced with.

Okay, so... after doing all this....  Here's my completed advent calendar project!



You like???  I used the ever so popular Echo Park Paper Apothecary papers to do this project.  This paper is just so beautiful and it worked really well with the style that I was trying to accomplish.  You'll notice that some patterns and embellishments are not from this collection, and finally came across this digital collection from Jessica Sprague called the Haunted, which has the similar feel to it. 

For the stamps, instead of just stamping it right on a plain cardstock, I printed these digital papers and stamped the sentiments on it - I think that this really helped to bring the project together.



For example, see the tag that I used for day 2? That was a digital file!

I used various embellishments to make each box unique.  I used the black/white twine from Twisted Sugar Twine, black/orange twine from Trendy Twine, crinkled ribbons from Scrapinkris, and some fibre yarns that I had sitting in my drawer for years.



I also used Epiphany Shape Studio to make some epoxy sticker embellishments, and use of foam dots/tape helped to bring out the dimension of each compartment - which makes each of them so fun to look at.



See the skull that I created with the shape tool? Isn't that awesome?







OH.... and I made a little surprise inside the 31st! Wanna see! Be scared! Open with caution!



BOO! The word pops up!  I used the Premium Pop Up Cards SVG Kit to do this!

That's pretty much about it.  I didn't plan what I was going to do in each of the boxes prior to - I just went with my inspiration, and what embellishments I had!  It was really fun!  The only cut files were to make the advent calendar, so everything else went really quick!  Of course I inked all the embellishments and the box to give it the spooky feel :)



I hope that you liked my project but I'm sure you're sick of my pics now, so you may want to go check out what all the other DTs have made with these amazing stamps!

Sooo... Alyssa from My Thoughts Exactly has sponsored all of our DT blogs to give away $5 gift cards for her store.  Please leave me some love and I'll pick the one with the loveliest comment! (Did ya actually believe that?  Of course I wouldn't do that! LOL!  I'll pick a random winner :)

Alyssa:  My Thoughts Exactly
Belinda:  Bee's Hive O' Drama
Bee:  Dare to bee creative
Lenae:  Sugar Gem
Jessica:  Crafty Rocket Science
Jennifer:  Our Change of Art

Have a crafty weekend everyone!