Origami Advent Calendar

An Advent calendar is a special calendar used to count the days before Christmas. It was invented by German Lutherans in 19th century. Since then, it spread all across the world. An Advent calendar can have a lot of forms, from a simple rectangular card with “windows” for each day, to wooden boxes with painted numbers on them or to small fabric bags. Each slot/box contains small gifts, such as candies or toys, or just poems, short stories, riddles or Bible verses. One must cultivate the patience to open one box every day.

My Advent calendar starts on first of December and it finishes on Christmas Eve (24th of December). It is made from paper and it has different origami models for each day. Most of them are containers: boxes or envelopes, in different colors and shapes (candies, stars, gift boxes, Christmas trees, kusudamas, houses). Other models are just cute origami birds or animals (foxes and reindeers) that carry with them small messages. The boxes are full of candies, the envelopes with Christmas stories, Christmas quests or riddles. 

It took me about one month to fold the models and arrange them in the Calendar. I had an initial period of research: which models should I make, where do I find the diagrams or tutorials for them, in which sizes should I make them and so on. I folded some of these models in the past, but some were new to me. I give special thanks to Paper Kawaii with her many Christmas video-tutorials, very well organized and with adorable origami models. I also used Pinterest for inspiration and the NOA origami magazines.

Once I have established the models I want to make, I started folding them. I had an initial order, but in the end, I did not respect it. Only for the first and the last one on my list as I added them in the beginning can be found in the Calendar.

I wanted to start with Leyla Torres fortune pouches, three of them with the colors of Romanian flag, each having 3 lucky stars: one red, one yellow and one blue. It was my way to celebrate Romanian National day, as I try to do each year. I wrapped all into a big fortune pouch, in Christmas colors and added a white tag with number one. First slot in my Advent calendar.

I finished with the Star, as the Christmas tree has a star at the top, I wanted to have a star at the top of my Advent calendar. The design of the star changed during the actual folding of the models, but the star idea remained.

After I folded more than a half, I spent one day trying to add the origami models in the actual calendar. It was challenging, especially the part where I had to weight them in order to distribute the models evenly on the wooden sticks, so that the structure should maintain the center of gravity. Unfortunately, the sticks I have bought were not straight, so the calendar has its ups and downs.
In the end, when all the origami models were at their places, I was very happy with the result. 

If you want to find the diagrams/tutorials for the models within my calendar, you can look in my previous Advent posts, where I have all the models and their diagram links.