Clever gift idea for young and old in the pre-Christmas period. Why always buy an advent calendar? Rather make an individual advent calendar yourself and fill the self-made advent calendar yourself. Then hobbyists and especially the recipients will have much more fun with it.
Craft instructions for the advent calendar
Tips and creative suggestions for making your own advent calendar. Because not only small children are happy when a surprise awaits them every day during the Advent season. The partner also enjoys it. That’s why you can make your whole family happy and design individual advent calendars. Since a few nice ideas already have a great effect, it doesn’t have to be that complicated and expensive. Here are a few inspirations for crafting and filling:

1) Sew the calendar bag yourself
The completely self-made calendar, in which you sew or knit the bags yourself, is relatively complex. However, sewing sacks is an easy way to get started, even for sewing beginners. If you want to save time, you can also buy bags or sachets. Then all you have to do is fill it up. But the advantage of doing it yourself is of course that each tag has an individual size, adapted to the size of the content. You can then hang the bags on a clothesline, put them in a box, or hide them.
2) Make your own advent calendar out of paper bags
Just as nice and easy is the use of paper bags to make your own Advent calendar. Because these look good and are available cheaply in the supermarket or on the Internet. Then you can paint and write on them. Stars or fir trees made of paper or felt can be stuck onto white paper bags. The fine golden wire is also always very decorative. After filling, you can then hang them up on a ribbon with clothespins, arrange them like a mobile, or just stand them up. If you are short on time, you can already buy beautifully decorated bags:
3) Use a kitchen roll or cardboard
Sometimes old rolls of paper are also useful. Because these are also well suited for handicrafts. For this purpose, the roles are painted according to the motto and glued to a substrate. You can then fill them with small gifts and close them with a lid. It fits, for example, homemade Christmas cards or vouchers.
4) Make your own calendar with matchboxes
Crafting with matchboxes is a cute idea. So you can paint them brightly and then make a house or train out of them. To do this, disassemble the individual matchboxes into two parts. Then tape the string to the bottom of the inner part of the first matchbox with scotch tape. But please put the outer part of the box right back over it. Then repeat this process until the 24th box. Also, always leave about 5-10 cm of cord between the individual wagons so that you don’t have any problems opening them later. You can design the 24th box differently than the 23 others. Because this box is supposed to represent a locomotive.
5) More ideas for making an advent calendar yourself
Of course, you can use pretty much anything to make a beautiful and individual calendar for the Advent season. You are completely free in your imagination. If you need more suggestions, we have collected more tips. Also, note great ideas for Christmas decorations.
- Four small flower pots, number them, and fill them with small things.
- Use discarded boxes. You can also design these creatively and set them up or hang them up.
- Wrap small gifts in wrapping paper, label them with numbers and hang them up.
- Fill in ideas for the advent calendar yourself
You can also design the content in a variety of ways. It’s easy, of course, if the recipient has a hobby, you can sweeten every day with a surprise related to the football club, your favorite car, free tickets, building blocks for handicrafts, etc. But even if you don’t have a hobby, there are plenty of ideas you can use to fill the advent calendar yourself. Our tips for decorating the Christmas tree are just as useful.
6) Fill the advent calendar with sweets
You can fill the homemade advent calendar with sweets in a classic way. Children in particular are happy about chewing gum, chocolate, or gummy bears. Or fill the calendar with homemade Christmas cookies. So you will be able to fill the 24 doors in a variety of ways.
7) Use drugstore items for filling
You will also find many small useful items in the drugstore with which you can fill the advent calendar yourself. So buy small perfume samples, jewelry, hand cream, or a small brush. You can also make small bath bombs yourself and give them away in the calendar.
8) Fill the advent calendar with homemade items

If you like to do handicrafts and give away things you have made yourself, filling the advent calendar will be easy and give you a lot of joy. So you can make soap yourself and give it away. Homemade room spray, vouchers, or worry dolls are also great ideas for your calendar. In addition, note other tips for homemade Christmas gifts.
9) More tips for filling the advent calendar yourself
So that you can spend Christmas without stress, you should start making your own advent calendar early on. You can start buying and collecting things to fill two or three months in advance. So that you have enough filling material, we have more ideas for you:
- Small toys such as marbles, bouncy balls, games of skill, and the like.
- Photos, photo stands, small candles, or Christmas tree decorations.
- keychains, stickers, jewelry, and fragrance oil.
- Lighter, flashlight, pocket knife, etc.
- Gift cards, vouchers, or scratch cards.
- Socks, underwear, or stationery.



















