The shop-bought advent calendars go on sale in September, which is a strange thing to be confronted with while the garden is still warm. Most of them are chocolate, most of the chocolate is not very nice, and by the eighth of December somebody has eaten three days in advance and the whole thing is over.
A made one lasts. It is a length of string, twenty-four little numbered tags and one small thing to do each day — and the making of it is a pleasant hour in November rather than another thing to buy.
So I have drawn you one. Four A4 sheets: twenty-four numbered tags, twenty-four activity slips and a fold-up pocket template, all free. Grab them just below, then read on for how to print them, hang them and fill them.
Grab your free printable advent calendar
Pop your email into the box below and I’ll send the four printable sheets straight over. Print them, cut them, punch the little circle at the top of each tag and peg them along a string.
Table of Contents
What’s inside the free set
Four sheets, and each one does a different job:
- Sheets one and two — twenty-four numbered tags. Twelve to a page, numbered 1 to 24, each with a small line-drawn motif beside the number and a short ruled line under it, the right length for a date or a name.
- Sheet three — twenty-four activity slips. One gentle December thing per day, already written, so you do not have to invent twenty-four ideas at eleven at night.
- Sheet four — a fold-up pocket template. Two pockets to a page. Print it as many times as you need if you would rather hang pockets than bare tags.
The motifs rotate through twelve drawings — a tree, a star, holly, a bauble, a snowflake, a candle, a berry wreath, a parcel, a bell, a fir sprig, a stocking and a mitten — in cranberry, forest green and old gold. It is all outline work on a cream ground, so a full sheet uses about as much ink as a page of text.
Why tags rather than doors
Doors are lovely and they are also a craft project with a deadline. Tags on a string take twenty minutes, they can be made in front of the television, and they store flat in an envelope for next year. If you want doors, cut the pockets from sheet four and glue them to a big sheet of card — same calendar, more of an evening.
How to print it so it does not come out wrong
Nine times out of ten a printable that comes out small or pale is a settings problem rather than a file problem. Four things to change:
- Turn off Fit to Page. Print at 100% or Actual Size. This is the single most common reason a tag sheet comes out shrunken.
- Set the paper type to match what is in the tray. Matte Photo Paper for card, Plain for ordinary paper — the printer lays down a different amount of ink for each.
- Choose High or Best quality, not Draft. Draft is what makes fine outlines look grey and furry.
- Feed card one sheet at a time, through the rear tray if your printer has one.
If you print a lot of templates and would like the paper weights on one page next to the printer, there is a whole printing guide with a free cheat sheet that goes into it properly.
What paper to use
Ordinary printer paper is fine for the activity slips, because nobody sees them until the day. For the tags, 200 to 250gsm card is the sweet spot — stiff enough to hold a punched hole for a month of small hands, thin enough that a home printer will still take it.
Kraft or brown card suits these designs particularly well. The colours are muted enough not to fight it, though brown will dull the gold tags a little.
What you’ll need
Some links in this section are affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. I only suggest things I would use myself.
Nothing here is essential beyond a printer and a pair of scissors, but a few small tools make the job quicker and the calendar sturdier:
- Card for the tags. Anything from 200 to 250gsm. A pack of vintage-style cardstock gives you soft cream and kraft tones that sit nicely under the cranberry and green.
- A paper trimmer. Twelve tags is a lot of straight lines. A 12-inch paper trimmer cuts a whole row at once and keeps every tag the same size, which matters more than you would think once they are hanging side by side.
- Something for the holes. A standard hole punch is fine. If little hands will be pulling tags off the string every morning, an eyelet setter kit puts a metal ring round each hole so it never tears through.
- A bone folder for the pockets. Sheet four folds far more neatly if you score the dotted line first — run a bone folder along a ruler and the fold goes exactly where it should.
- Twine and mini pegs. Garden twine and a bag of small wooden pegs from any craft shop.
If you only buy one thing, make it the card. Tags printed on ordinary paper curl within a week; tags on card are still flat on Christmas Eve, and they go back in the envelope for next year.
Hanging it up
A length of garden twine and twenty-four small wooden pegs is all it needs, and both cost less than one supermarket calendar. Run the string along a mantelpiece, across a window, up the side of a bookcase or diagonally across a wall — a diagonal run looks far better than a straight one and takes exactly the same effort.
Hang them out of order. It sounds like a small thing and it changes the whole feel of it: when the numbers are scattered, finding today’s tag becomes part of the morning rather than a queue you work along.
If you have nowhere to hang a string
Stand the tags in a jam jar, numbers facing in, and take one out each morning. Or peg them round the edge of a picture frame. Or clip them to the branches of the tree if it goes up early. The string is a suggestion, not a requirement.
What goes behind each number
This is where a homemade advent calendar quietly beats a bought one, and it is also where people give up — because twenty-four good ideas is genuinely hard to produce on demand. Sheet three does that part for you.
The twenty-four slips are all small and most of them cost nothing: bake something that makes the house smell good, walk after dark and look at other people’s windows, ring somebody instead of texting them, put one thing in a bag for the charity shop, sit by the tree for ten minutes doing nothing. Day one is putting the string up, and day twenty-four is setting out something small for Christmas morning.
Several of them are drawing or making days, which is deliberate — a calendar that asks you to make something occasionally is a nicer companion than one that only asks you to eat. If you would like more to draw on those days, there are twenty easy Christmas doodles that will fill a page in ten minutes.
Writing your own instead
The ruled line on each tag takes a date or a name rather than a whole sentence, so if you want to write your own activities, write them on the back — print single-sided and every tag has a blank reverse. For children, one line of your handwriting is usually better than a printed slip anyway; they will read it in your writing, which is half the point.
Four ways to change it
- A reverse advent. Instead of taking something out, put something in: one tin behind each number, and the whole box goes to a food bank on Christmas Eve.
- A book advent. Number twenty-four wrapped books or picture books, hang a tag on each, unwrap one a night.
- A gratitude advent. Write on the back of the tag each evening rather than each morning — one line a day about what December has actually been like. There are more prompts along those lines in my Christmas journal prompts.
- A two-house advent. Print two sets and post one to a grandparent, so the same small thing happens in two places on the same day.
Make it now, not in December
The mistake is making an advent calendar on the thirtieth of November. Print all four sheets in one go on a quiet evening, cut them all, punch them all, thread the twine and put the finished tags in an envelope with the decorations. Then on the first of December it is already done, and the only job is hanging it.
The tags keep perfectly well from one year to the next. Print the whole set even if you only want the numbers — next December is already half made.
Other things to do with the sheets
The numbered tags are good place cards for a Christmas table if you write a name on the ruled line, and they make excellent journal tuck-ins — a tag is exactly the right size to hold one December memory and it slides into a pocket page beautifully. There are more festive papers to go with them in my Christmas junk journal spreads, and a free starter set with it.
The pocket template is not only an advent thing either. Folded and glued, it holds a gift card, a photograph, a pressed leaf or a note, which is why the same shape turns up all over the Christmas junk journal ideas post.
And if you are wrapping as well as counting down, the thirty-six free printable Christmas gift tags are drawn in the same style and the same three colours, so the parcels and the calendar match without any effort at all.
Using the tags in a junk journal afterwards
Once December is over, do not throw the tags away. Twenty-four small numbered cards with a festive motif on each are exactly the sort of ephemera a junk journal loves, and a December spread built from your own advent calendar is a much nicer record of the month than a photo on your phone.
- Make a December pocket page. Glue one of the fold-up pockets to a page with a strip of washi along the top, and keep the tags from your favourite days inside it.
- Write on the backs. If you did the gratitude version, the backs are already filled in — tuck them into the journal in order and you have a little diary of December.
- Fussy cut the motifs. The star, the holly and the bauble are all small enough to cut round and use as embellishments on a scrapbook page, a gift card or the edge of a journal spread.
- Use them as tuck-ins. Thread a scrap of ribbon through the punched hole and a tag becomes a bookmark-style tuck-in that sticks out of the top of the page.
If this is the part you enjoy most, my step-by-step guide to making a junk journal from a printable kit walks you through the binding, the pockets and the layering from scratch.
Frequently asked questions
How big are the tags?
Twelve to an A4 sheet, so a little under 6cm wide and about 6cm tall. Printed at 100% a standard 6mm hole punch swallows the little guide circle neatly, and a standard mini wooden peg clips the width with room to spare.
Can I print it in black and white?
Yes, and it holds up well because everything is line work rather than solid fill. Choose greyscale in your printer dialogue rather than letting it convert on the fly, and the outlines stay crisp. Black and white tags are also nicer to colour in.
When should I put it up?
The first of December, traditionally, which is why day one’s slip is putting the string up. Make it in November though — the difference between a calendar that gets hung and one that stays in a drawer is almost always whether it was cut out in advance.
Can I sell things made with it?
Print as many as you like for your own home, your family and your classroom. Please do not sell the tags themselves or the file, and please do not pass the PDF on — send people to this page instead and they can get their own.
Is it all right for children to colour in?
It is, and it is a good rainy-afternoon job in late November. Print the tags in black and white, hand over the felt tips, and let them number the ones they colour themselves.
Final Thoughts
Print one sheet tonight, just to see the size of it. Twelve tags takes about four minutes, and it is the difference between a December that starts calmly and one that starts with a supermarket queue on the thirtieth of November.
And if you enjoy making your own paper things, my full junk journal kits live in the Artsydee Creations Club — whole themed collections of papers, tags, pockets and ephemera, with new kits added all through the year. If you would rather pick one kit at a time, everything is also in my Payhip shop.
I make relaxed art and craft videos over on my YouTube channel too. If you would like the next one, subscribe here and it will turn up in your feed.
Pin this for later so the calendar is easy to find again in late November, and come and say hello on Pinterest, where I save all my festive printables and journal ideas.