Nightmare Before Christmas Advent Calender

This was my "hush hush" project that I did over the holidays. I work with my cousin Landon and his favorite movie is Nightmare Before Christmas. It was pure torture not being able to share my progress on Facebook because I didn't want him or any of his siblings to see it before it was done. So now that Christmas is over I can finally blog about it!

I had been mulling around this idea in my head pretty much the whole year! I didn't know how I was going to do it, and I changed my mind about a thousand times on what I was going to do, but finally at crunch time I had to decide and it all just fell together so nicely. There was one night where I was just stumped and had no clue what to do, so I sat down and watched the movie to get inspired. I'm glad that I did. I didn't use any of the ideas that I originally thought of, go figure. 

 Some of the details that I love about this project. 

• The spider web material over Christmas tree material.
• This stuff was a bugger to find! I was dumb and procrastinated, and it was the day after Halloween and I panicked! If I was going to go forward I needed this fabric fast! I drove out to a Joann's about a half hour away from my house, and looked EVERYWHERE for fabric like this. This was not what I was originally looking for, but i found this,and just in time too because right after I nabbed it some lady gave me a guilt trip and wanted it. But I stood my ground, and got it.  
• Felt ornaments

• I love felt! If you read my blog you know that. So I made all the ornaments out of felt, some sparkly felt some not. There is a little pocket in the back of each one for a piece of candy. That is one thing I should of planned better. It was kind of hard to find candy that fit after I was done. Luckily I did find something, but they just barely fit. 
• All the ornaments hook onto the ribbon with tiny close pins that I covered with white sparkly felt and a cute little glittery sticker thing that I happened to run across one night at Michael's.
• The wooden numbers were a find! I was going to stitch the numbers on but that would of taken a ton of time, and I was already hand stitching all the ornaments together. So I found these wooden numbers online. It was probably the most expensive part of the project but I think it made it look "finished" for lack of a better word. The only problem with them was they were actually brown. So I was going to spray paint them, but its cold outside and I can be really lazy. So I ended up just using a black marker and coloring all the numbers.
•  The Black Frame

• I actually have had this frame for years. Its been sitting in my closet since I was married. Originally I was going to make it all fabric so you could roll it up during the non-Christmas season. But, I'm not that great with a sewing machine yet and that would of been pretty ambitious to try. So randomly this idea popped into my head. So the cardboard that comes in the frame is what I upholstered with the Christmas tree and Spider web material, and attached everything to that. 
• Once again I had the problem of a wrong color, the frame was originally a reddish wood color. My mom is craft central, so she loaned me some black paint and I painted it one night, she even had gloss to spray on it so it made it look better. Thanks Mom!!

•  The Picture in the Middle
• This was my big headache! I originally bought an iron-on transfer that I found on ebay. Well it came and I totally screwed it up! And I didn't have time to get another one. So my husband was like, "just print a picture." Well....ok. So I found a picture on line and luckily I do have a pretty nice printer, and it printed up really good, and I just attached it on. I think it could of been better, but I just didn't have the time.

So in the end I think it turned out great! It was a really fun project with a lot of learning and improvising. But that is what I love about crafting! I can always learn something new!