Star Box Tutorial & Advent Tree Photos

 Advent Calendar Done

One more thing off of the list, and it's only the 4th of December...

The 'ornaments' are little match boxes that have 1-3 instruction pages worth of lego inside.  They have no idea what they are building, and they love it.  In a way it helps that they started on the 4th because the got to open 4 boxes and get a good start on it.  I emailed myself 25 emails with photos of the instruction pages for the corresponding box, so that they don't see the whole project up front :)

Now if only i could find that darn elf.  I packed him 'special' so that the kids would not accidentally unpack him....last year we never found that 'special' place, turns out the elf was sick- and we had a replacement for a while at the end....

And the Star Box Tutorial;

I made the star box for Day 25, also it hold any pieces too big for the match boxes ( so i have to fish these out when they come to them in the instructions).  There were only three or four like that, the rest of the larger pieces were in the last section of instructions and went into the day 25 box anyways.

First you will need the SVG file from yesterday's post You can either cut this out on an electronic cutter or print them out, cut them out with scissors and then stencil them onto your fancy paper.  If you choose the stencil option, cut on the solid lines and score on the dashed lines

I cut 1 top out of fancy christmas 12x12" card stock, then cut out one set, that is five strips of the top sides out of green 8.5" x 11" paper.  

For the bottom cut of the box cut out the bottom again on 12x12, this is a smidge smaller than the top, so keep them separate if you are using the same paper for top and bottom.  I used black because i have a bit left over from Halloween ;)  Additionally, I cut another 'Top' out of cereal box to line the inside of the box in order to give it some rigidity. It is large and kind of floppy. To do this use the Top SVG, but remove the 'flaps'. 

Here is a good place to note that you can re-size SVGs rather easily if say you want a smaller box.  Select all image on the page and make sure that the ratios are locked.  Because this file is on multiple pages you have to either reduce by a percentage that you can use on all of the pages, or you can open a new SVG and place all the images onto one page, then select all and drag the bottom to reduce/increase the size.

Lastly cut the 5 bottom side strips and score.

Bend all paper on dashed score lines. 

Apply adhesive to the 1/2" tabs at the end of the strips for the bottom.  Then assemble to create one long strip to go around the edge of the star.  Leave the adhesive off of the exposed end tab for now.

Apply adhesive to the outside of the flaps of the bottom just next to the score line.

I like to start by placing creased fold into the inside corner of the star bottom.  When you come to the last bit, add adhesive to that last flap and attach.

Do the same for the top.  ( The pictures above show asssembly for my top, same as the bottom.  I suggest that you do the bottome first so that you get the hang of it on the less visible piece.)  

Finally, put some adhesive the cereal box star and attach to inside of bottom half,  or if you prefer pretty paper on the inside put it, brown side out, on the bottom.

Please post a quick comment or follow if you found this interesting or useful :)