DIY Perfume Advent Calendar 2018

I love advent calendars especially if they are filled with perfume. This year I decided to make my own advent calendar inspired by Sam’s wonderful post on her I Scent You A Day website  (see the link at the end of this article). One advantage is that I can use perfume samples I have laying around for testing and it is cheaper than buying a perfume advent calendar online. Although it was quite tempting not to buy a prefab calendar as some were absolutely stunning (like the Carthusia calendar!).

The Power Of Surprise

One of the great things of a ready made advent calendar is not knowing which scent you will get.  I bought the Micallef and 4160 Tuesdays Calendar before and this was what I liked most. A little and lovely scented surprise everyday. You could ask someone else to pick the samples for you, help you to wrap them and put them in the calendar. I can imagine children like to help with this as well. This was my original plan but due to circumstances my little nephew was not able to help me.

Choosing An DIY Advent Calendar

I started looking for a fill able advent calendar online on sites like Wish, Amazon and EBay. In the end I found one from textile on Wish in China. I saw several wooden calendars on the Dutch Marktplaats and Bol websites as well but it wasn’t clear if samples would fit into the boxes.

Filling The DIY Perfume Calendar With Samples

The next step was to collect the samples. This was a bit more work but it was quite nice to go through them and select the ones I wanted to try. If you don’t have samples you can order them via internet, look for them on EBay or (the Dutch Ebay) Marktplaats. Atelier Cologne has a great deal of 16 samples for 30 euro too for example. Many samples I have used for my Calendar were gifted by (with or without purchases) The Perfume Lounge, Skins or fellow perfume lovers.

The Filled DIY Perfume Calendar

I wrapped all samples in white and green thin tissue paper matching the advent tree and voila! A beautiful custom made scented advent calendar. It might be short notice now to order some things so I do hope you find these things before December 1 or you could step in some days later if you plan on making one.

Extra filling ideas! You can use little soaps or travel sizes of shower gels instead of perfume samples if you don’t have enough. Or you could use mini perfume bottles as well if they fit into the calendar days. You can find travel sizes of affordable body products at your local drugstore like Boots, Etos or Kruidvat. Small scented candles can be great as well for this purpose.

Two years ago 4160 Tuesdays used a cardboard box with small colored numbered envelopes for the days as an Advent Calendar which was a very nice idea. This should not be to difficult to find for next week. You can see this box in my previous article in the link underneath.

This is the end result! A wonderful advent perfume calendar for December 2018. It can be filled next year with other samples too!

Do you like Advent Calendars? Would you make one or did you buy one already made?

Read more about making your own Advent Calendar on Sam’s website I Scent You A Day here and thanks to Ned for this brilliant idea!

Read my previous review on the 4160 Tuesdays Advent Calendar here .