Cats On The Homestead: K-Cup Advent Calendar

Friday, November 29, 2013

K-Cup Advent Calendar

So I saw this neat tutorial by Vicki over at Making Our Sustainable Life on making an Advent Calendar out of used (but cleaned) K-Cups and a shirt box. If you don't know, K-Cups are those coffee pods used in the Keurig coffee makers. And if you have a Keurig coffee maker you have a lot of used K-Cups; which I do, which is why Vicki's post caught my attention. So I decided to try to make this Advent Calendar myself. This isn't as thorough a tutorial here since Vicki did such a nice job but here goes.

You will need:
1 shirt box
24 K-Cups
Hot glue gun
Something to cut holes in the shirt box top (I used an x-acto knife)
Wrapping paper pre-cut to the correct size to wrap the shirt box
Small trinkets to fill the 24 K-Cups
Numbers 1- 24 (I cut mine out on my Silhouette but stickers or markers work too)
Ribbon or other decoration you want to put on the wrapped box.

First I cleaned out my K-Cups. No photos. What a mess. Just be prepared for coffee grounds everywhere. Do this over the sink.

Next I marked out circles on the top of a shirt box. My shirt box was 9.5" X 14". Try to space out four rows of six circles evenly. You want a circle that is the same measurement as the inside diameter of the K-Cup. This will make the cups fit snugly in the box top. I found the circles in my box where about 3/8" apart. Once all the circles are drawn on the top of the shirt box cut them out. I used an x-acto knife to cut out my circles.

In these two photos you can see the top of the box, above, with some of the circles cut out and the K-Cups in place. Below are the same cups from the other side. I placed my K-Cups in the circles as each circle was cut. This help stabilized the box lid while I was cutting.

It took awhile to cut out all those circles. Below is the top of the shirt box filled with K-Cups.

Next each K-Cup needs to be hot glued in place. I glued each K-Cup in four placed like spot welding.

Once all the K-Cups were glued in place, I flipped the box lid over and put the shirt box lid on the shirt box bottom then hot glued the top and bottom together. The K-Cups are slightly taller than the box so once the top and bottom of the box were glued together the cups were held snuggly.

Next I filled all the cups with chocolate coins and small trinkets. Anything that fits will work.

Next I put hot glue around each and every K-Cup on the top of the shirt box making sure to not get any inside the cups. I needed to work fast on this step so there is no photo. The purpose of the hot glue is to affix the wrapping paper to the top of the shirt box. My daughter will be poking her finger through the wrapping paper into a K-Cup each night of Advent. I do not want her to be able to see into the other cups or have the trinkets shift around out of the K-Cups. So glue all around each cup to keep everything in place. Before the glue dries, press your piece of precut wrapping paper down into the glue on the top of the shirt box. Make sure it adheres around each cup.

The last step is to finish wrapping the box and number the cups. Again, each evening my daughter will push her finger through a number to get the surprise inside. Once the box is wrapped, you can feel the circles the K-Cups make through the wraping paper so you can tell where to put the numbers.