Disney Countdown

Full disclaimer before we even get into this post.  I've debated sharing this or not because the hard truth is I don't have a list of supplies, I know people will ask.  I simply didn't make notes of any of that.  Lots of the punches I used are retired, so it wouldn't help anyway.  I will give basic instruction of what I did but this project was made as a gift for my family and it never occurred to me to create a tutorial or jot down supplies.  My apologies.  I did decided to finally share it because I love it and I want it on my blog so that in a few years I can still look back on it and say, wow that was a great project.  Now that that's all out of the way let's get down to the project itself.  I used the Christmas Countdown Project Kit from the Holiday Catalog to create a Disney countdown.  The plan for this was going to first reveal the trip to the kids, then second act as a countdown until we left.  Our last box was the day before we left, at 5:40am! I will list all the characters below on the bottom of the post in case you need help figuring some out.

Inside each box was a picture of something we'd need or do for/on our trip.  The first 5 or 6 boxes were not Disney specific.  One was an airplane another fireworks, etc.  After that the boxes were completely Disney or Walt Disney World related, pictures of Thunder Mountain, the Monorail, Spaceship Earth from EPCOT, etc.  I wanted the kids to spend some time guessing what it was before it was obvious.  I anticipated they'd know if 2-4 days, and they pretty much did....but they didn't reveal it to myself or my husband.  Partly because I think they wanted to be 100% sure that if they asked "are we going to WDW" they wanted to the answer to be yes.  There were all kinds of random places thrown out before they got to WDW but they were on the right track and they loved opening the boxes every morning even after they knew the destination.

You may think that because this was Disney themed that would have been a dead giveaway.  We're a Disney celebrating family.  My husband and I met at Disney World while we were both on internships there.  We have lots of Disney stuff all throughout our house so the fact that it was Disney on the outside doesn't mean anything in our house.  To make the whole thing, I created a list of 25 characters our family loves.  Once I had my list I worked on one character at a time.  I made the base of each character 1 7/8" square to fit on the boxes.  Then I just grabbed punches and started working.  Some is hand cut, lots of it is with punches though.  Once I had each character made I punched a half circle with the 1" Circle Punch from the top center of each one to fit on the box.  When all the characters were done I adhered them all to the box.  When we got home from our trip I made the Christmas side of the box on the opposite side so we'll still use this as a Christmas Countdown too.

Characters:
1st Row
Mickey, Chip, Elsa, Genie, Ariel
2nd Row
Eeyore, Jasmine, Fear, Anna, Peter Pan
3rd Row
Buzz Lightyear, Tinkerbell, Mater, Pluto, Sadness
4th Row
Simba, Dory, Belle, Dale, Mike Wazowski
5th Row
Cinderella, Cruella de Ville, Bashful, Winnie the Pooh and Minnie Mouse

Thanks for looking, see you soon!!!