Advent Calendar Maker

How to make a DIY advent calendar with these numbers

1. Pick a design and a shape. Round stickers go flat on a box lid or a sealed bag. Hanging tags tie onto a bag handle, a stocking or a string of pegs. Square cards clip to a bag top or sit in the pocket of a fabric calendar.
2. Choose 24 or 25 days and a size. The line under the preview says how many fit on one sheet and how many sheets you need, before you download anything.
3. Download the PDF and print it at 100% (“Actual size”), not “Fit to page”, so a 38 mm sticker really comes out 38 mm across.
4. Cut along the thin grey lines. Every number sits at least 8 mm inside the paper edge, so a home printer does not clip it, and there are 4 mm between numbers, so a slightly wobbly cut never nicks the next one.

Make it an activity advent calendar

Instead of (or as well as) a sweet, each day can hold a small job to do together. Open What’s behind each door under the controls: it starts with 25 family ideas (bake cookies, a hot chocolate walk to see the lights, write a card to grandma, make paper snowflakes) that you can edit, replace with Clear all, or bring back with Use starter ideas. Fill the doors from a list swaps in one of seven ready lists of 25: family activities, acts of kindness, Bible verses, ideas for grown-ups (cosy evenings, nothing built around drinking), toddlers and preschoolers, teens, or couples. If you have already typed your own texts, it asks before replacing them. Each line takes up to 80 characters. Then choose where the text goes: Under the number prints it on the front, or On the back prints a second sheet for double-sided printing so the number stays big and the activity is a surprise when the child turns the card over. Short text prints larger; long text first gets smaller, then wraps onto more lines. If a day still does not fit (an 80-character line on a 32 mm sticker, say), it is cut short with “…” and its row is outlined in the list and named under it, so shorten it or pick a bigger size.

Print a colouring advent calendar

Choose Colouring calendar under What to print. One poster puts every day on a single A4 or Letter page under the title “Mia’s Advent Calendar” (type your child’s name; an empty box prints “My Advent Calendar”): 24 squares in four columns, or 25 in five columns of five when you pick 1 to 25. Each square has its day number in a circle and a black-outline Christmas drawing: a bauble, a snowman, a stocking, a candle, a reindeer, a present, a bell, a gingerbread man, a mitten, holly, a candy cane, hot chocolate, a wreath, a snowy house, a star and a tree, 16 in all, with the tree on day 24 and the star on day 25. After day 16 some repeat, but two squares next to each other never show the same picture. Booklet prints a cover (the Christmas tree from our folding card maker’s colour-in cards, plus a row of numbered circles to tick off) and then one page per day with the drawing about 15 cm tall, so 1 to 24 is 25 pages. Little kids draws 1 mm lines on the poster (1.8 mm in the booklet) and keeps the shapes big; Older kids and adults halves the line width and adds simple patterns inside the shapes, such as zigzags on the bauble, more stripes on the candy cane, stripes on the stocking, facets on the star and dots on the present, so there are more small areas to fill.

Questions

How does a colouring advent calendar work?

Instead of opening a door, the child colours one picture each day from 1 December until Christmas. Pin the poster on the fridge or a wall at the child’s height with a pot of crayons next to it; each morning they find today’s number and colour that square, so the page fills up as Christmas gets closer and the coloured squares show how many days are left. The booklet works the same way but gives each day a whole page, which is better for children who press hard or colour outside small shapes; staple it at the top left or punch it into a folder, and let them tear out the finished page to give to a grandparent. It costs one sheet of paper for the poster (or 25 or 26 for the booklet) and no treats, so it suits a classroom too: print one poster per child. Plain 80 g/m² copy paper takes crayons and coloured pencils well; for felt-tip pens, 120 g/m² paper stops the colour showing through.

Is there a colouring advent calendar for adults?

Choose Older kids and adults: the lines get thinner (0.5 mm on the poster) and every drawing gains simple patterns, zigzags, stripes, dots and the faceted star, which suits fine-tip pens and coloured pencils and takes 5 to 15 minutes a day rather than one. It is not a dense mandala book: the pictures stay cheerful and readable. The booklet in this mode gives each drawing a whole page, which is the better choice if you want to shade.

How do I use activity cards in an advent calendar?

Print the cards or tags with an activity on each, and put one in each bag or box alongside (or instead of) a treat; on the day, the child reads it out and that is the plan. Download the one-page What’s behind each door list too: it has every day from 1 to 24 (or 25) in order with its activity and a tick box, so you can keep it on the fridge, see on Sunday that Thursday needs flour and icing, and swap two days when the weather or a busy evening gets in the way. Keep the activities realistic for a school night: most of the starter ideas take 15 to 45 minutes and need nothing you would have to buy specially.

How do I make a Bible verse advent calendar?

Pick Bible verses (KJV) in Fill the doors from a list. The 25 verses follow the Advent story in order: the prophecies first (Isaiah 40:3, Isaiah 9:2, Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 9:6, Micah 5:2), then the angel’s visit to Mary in Luke 1, the journey and the birth in Luke 2, the shepherds, the wise men of Matthew 2, “For unto you is born this day…” (Luke 2:11) on day 24 and John 1:14 on day 25. The wording is the King James Version, quoted exactly; where a verse goes on past 80 characters it is cut at a natural break and marked “…”, so look up the full verse to read aloud on the day. On medium square cards the longest verses print at about 7 pt under the number; choose On the back and they get about 9 pt, which a child who is learning to read manages more easily. On small round stickers several of the longer verses do not fit under the number and are cut short (the page names them), so use the back or a bigger size.

Can I make a kindness advent calendar for a class?

Yes. Pick Acts of kindness: 25 small things a child can actually do in a day, such as leaving a kind note for the postman, making a card for someone who lives alone, putting a tin in the food bank box or saying thank you to a shop worker by name. For a class, choose hanging tags or square cards with the act On the back, shuffle them for a hunt if you like, and let one child turn over a card each morning. A few acts happen at home (help make dinner, tidy a room without being asked), so edit any line that does not suit school, for example “Help tidy the classroom”. Print the one-page list too: in December 2026, days 5, 6, 12, 13, 19 and 20 fall on weekends, so you can see at a glance which acts the class will miss and swap them.

Advent calendar activity ideas for toddlers, teens or couples?

Pick the matching list and then edit it, because no list knows your December. Toddlers and preschoolers holds 25 short, adult-led ideas (paint a paper snowflake, a teddy-bear picnic, musical statues) with nothing small enough to swallow; at two or three, ten minutes is a whole activity, so put the bigger ones (a walk to see the lights, stirring biscuit dough) on weekend days. Teens works because most entries hand over a choice or a privilege: they pick the film, the takeaway or the game, or win a lie-in or an extra hour up. Swap in what your teenager actually values, and print it On the back so the day stays a surprise. Couples is dates at home and small gestures (cook a new recipe, phones off for an evening, write three things you love about each other), none of them costly or explicit. Before printing, check the one-page list against your diary and move anything that needs an evening onto a free one.

How do I print the activities double-sided so they line up?

Choose On the back. The PDF then alternates front, back, front, back. Print it double-sided with flip on long edge (often called “long-edge binding”, the default on most printers for portrait pages). The back sheet is drawn as a mirror image of the front, left to right, because turning the sheet over on its long edge swaps left and right: the number at the top left of the front has its activity at the top right of the back, which is exactly behind it. Each back also carries its own small day number, so after cutting you can check that 7 has day 7’s activity. Home duplex printers usually shift the back by 1 to 2 mm, so the back has no cut line of its own: cut along the front’s grey lines. Without a duplex printer, print page 1, put the printed sheet back in the tray and print page 2. Which way up it has to go in depends on the printer, so test once with a plain sheet that has an X drawn on its top edge.

What does “Shuffle for a hunt” do?

It puts the numbers on the sheet in a random order instead of 1 to 24 in rows, which is what you want when the numbers are stuck on a wall of bags or a box of matchboxes and finding today’s number is part of the fun. Each day’s activity stays on its own number whatever the order. The shuffle is driven by a seed number shown next to the switch and printed on the sheet and on the parent list: type the same seed back in to get the identical sheet again, for example to reprint one torn tag, and press New order for a different arrangement.

Is this advent calendar maker really free online?

Yes. There is no sign-up, no watermark and no paid version. The sheet is drawn and the PDF is built inside your own browser, so nothing is uploaded and it costs nothing to print as many sets as you like, for example one per child in a different design.

How many printable numbers fit on one sheet?

Medium round stickers are 38 mm (1.5 in) across and all 24 fit on one A4 or US Letter sheet. Small stickers (32 mm) fit 35 to a sheet, so 1 to 25 is still one page; large ones (60 mm) are 12 to a sheet. Hanging tags are 30 × 48, 36 × 58 or 48 × 80 mm: 25, 16 (20 on Letter) or 9 per sheet. Square cards are 32, 40 or 56 mm: 35, 24 (20 on Letter) or 12 per sheet. The paper starts on Letter if your browser is set to US or Canadian English, and on A4 everywhere else.

What should I print advent calendar tags and numbers on?

For tags and cards, matte cardstock of 160 to 250 g/m² (about 60 to 90 lb cover) is stiff enough to hang from a bag without curling and still feeds through most home printers; check your printer's maximum in the manual or inside the tray, and feed card one sheet at a time if it jams. Plain 80 g/m² paper works for numbers you glue flat onto a box. The Ink saver design prints black on white, which costs very little toner and looks good on kraft bags.

Sticker paper or card?

Use full-sheet matte sticker paper (one big unscored label, A4 or Letter) if you want to stick the numbers straight onto paper bags, boxes or jars: print, cut out the circles with scissors, peel and press. Pre-cut round label sheets will not line up with this layout, so choose the plain full-sheet kind. Use card if the numbers will hang from a ribbon or be clipped on, since stickers are too floppy to hang. Glossy sticker paper makes the navy and red designs look rich, but test one sheet first: some inkjet ink smudges on gloss until it dries.

How do I attach the numbers to bags or boxes?

On paper bags, fold the top over twice and close it with a mini wooden peg or a stapler through the tag or card, or punch two holes and tie a ribbon. Tags have a dashed 6 mm circle, the size of a standard single-hole punch: punch it and thread twine, then tie the tag to the bag handle or to a string across a wall. On boxes and matchboxes, use a glue stick or a square of double-sided tape on the back of a card, or simply a sticker. Toilet-roll tubes can be pinched shut at both ends with the number glued to the middle.

Should my advent calendar have 24 or 25 numbers?

It depends where Christmas presents are opened. Most advent calendars run from 1 December to 24 December, Christmas Eve, which is the main present day in Denmark, Germany, Sweden and much of Europe. In the US, the UK and Australia many families open presents on Christmas morning, so a 25th bag for 25 December makes sense there. If December starts late for you, print 24 or 25 anyway and simply open two on the first day you begin.

Which design is best for a printable advent calendar for kids?

Kids bright gives every number its own colour with white confetti, so a small child can find “the yellow 9” before they can read 19. Choose the large size for toddlers: 60 mm stickers and 48 × 80 mm tags are easy to spot and easy to cut out together. Older children can cut their own round stickers with safety scissors.