Christmas Countdown

No, I'm not really counting down to Christmas yet but this project has been on my work table for awhile and it was time to get it done.

I salvaged this broken toy from a box I was donating. Originally the blocks had little sensors that, when the blocks were matched properly, made the animal sounds to match the images. I'd seen similar date blocks and thought it would make the perfect Christmas countdown.

This is what the original toy looked like. I sanded down all the little circle sensors, painted the base and added papers to all the sides of the two blocks. I used a 6"x6" paper pad from Authentique as they all matched and the patterns were scaled down for the 3" blocks.

I cut the numbers with my Silhouette Cameo in dark green card stock and used Mod Podge to adhere them to the blocks. I also cut the "Days til Christmas" from red card stock and added it to a strip of one of the papers on the base. 

The hardest part of this little upcycle project was determine the numbers for each block. At first I couldn't get it to work out, but then I realized that the 6 and 9 were interchangeable so I only needed one of them.  For one block I used numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; the other block has 0, 1, 2, 6, 7, 8.

I think this is a pretty and useful redo!