Star advent calendar

This year I wanted a natural-looking advent calendar using these stylish black and white advent calendar tags, and I wanted to integrate my all-time favourite packaging, recycled packaging paper which I've saved from lots of Rifle Paper Co orders! It features on my Instagram often!

I used a cookie cutter to draw out the template, and then cut out and sewed round lots of stars, adding the contents before finishing. I sewed 12 stars with white thread and 12 with black thread.

Inside the advent calendar I added small toffees, hazelnuts, and lots of small stationery.

Next, I punched a hole in each star and tied the tags through (I used a rivet punch with copper rivets but you can't see the hole so it doesn't matter too much.)

I tied the stars at varying lengths to an embroidery hoop (you could also use a giant safety pin, similar to when I made this advent calendar.) I'm just realising my advent calendars have a recurring theme, as I added eucalyptus (again) ! I always have eucalyptus in my home in varying stages of decay so it's a given for my Christmas decorations.

I used black and white baker's twine to attach the stars to the hoop, and bought some thick velvet ribbon from the local haberdasher to finish it off.