Craftamo 12 Days of Christmas Advent Calendar Review: Art Tools, Not Art Supplies

Introduction

Art and craft advent calendars have become a proper seasonal genre, and most of them follow the same formula: 24 doors, a mix of brand-picked supplies, and a few fillers. The Craftamo 12 Days of Christmas Advent Calendar breaks that formula in an interesting way. It contains only 12 boxes, it was curated end to end by a collaborating professional watercolor artist, and every day comes with its own dedicated video tutorial.

At $200, it sits firmly in the premium tier of art advent calendars. The big question is whether that price makes sense for a calendar that leans heavily on tutorials and tools rather than paints and consumables. After going through all 12 days and actually following one of the tutorials, the answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.

The Concept: Artist-Curated, Tutorial-Led

The most distinctive thing about this calendar is how it was put together. Rather than the brand selecting generic products, Craftamo handed the entire curation over to the collaborating artist, whose theme is travel and portability: items you can use to bring your watercolor supplies with you.

She deliberately chose 12 days instead of 24 because finding 24 high-quality materials would have been either insanely expensive or padded with junk. Her reasoning was that she wanted buyers to get things they would genuinely use and enjoy. That philosophy shows throughout the unboxing: nothing here feels like filler.

Every single day pairs its item with a tutorial, and together the 12 videos total 265 minutes, roughly 4.5 hours of instruction from a professional artist. For a creative who wants a daily ritual through the season, opening a door and then following a tutorial is a genuinely lovely structure that we have not seen elsewhere.

What Is Inside the Calendar

Day one opens with a custom sketchbook designed by the artist, with thick, textured, high-quality paper that handles wet media well. Day two adds a small travel-sized watercolor palette plus a page holder, designed to work as a portable setup.

Day four brings two professional-grade metallic watercolor pans, silver and gold. Day five is a custom card-making set with two quality envelopes and two pieces of heavy watercolor card you can fold and paint for people. Later days add a small enamel pin, a palette-and-tube key ring, and a day-twelve finisher: a nicely designed tote-style bag that feels well made.

The Tools: Brushes, Pens, and Accessories

The tool selection is where the premium positioning is most obvious. Day three includes an 8-round watercolor brush that feels light in the hand but has clearly high-quality fibers. Day six adds a very small detail brush.

Day seven contains fine liner pens with fade-proof, water-resistant pigment ink, exactly the kind of liners watercolor artists love for outlines and details over washes. Day nine brings three rolls of washi tape in cute designs that genuinely feel high quality rather than thin filler stock.

Day eleven is perhaps the most luxurious-feeling item: a brush roll with plenty of slots, soft and well constructed. Many brush rolls feel cheap; this one does not, and it gives the whole box a luxury art advent calendar character.

Who This Calendar Is For

Here is the key distinction: this is an art tool calendar, not an art supply calendar. The only paints included are the two metallic pans. The artist deliberately decided against adding more paints because truly professional-grade tubes would have meant only one or two, and she assumed most buyers already own watercolor paint they love.

That assumption matters. If you are a complete beginner buying your first advent calendar, $200 is a lot, and the tutorials assume you have a basic paint set to work with. Beginners are probably better served by more affordably priced alternatives.

For artists who already own watercolors, though, this calendar works beautifully alongside existing supplies: quality tools, portable accessories, and structured daily tutorials. Most of the value here lives in those 4.5 hours of instruction, which the artist produced entirely on her own, not edited or subsidized by the brand.

What Could Be Better

Two items felt less essential: the key ring and the enamel pin. Swapping one of them for an extra paint pan, or even a red or a green, would have made the box more complete for its price. The artist was likely constrained by the price point, and to her credit she refused to include low-grade products to pad the count.

The trade-off overall is quality over quantity. At roughly $16.60 per box, each item is pricier than what you would find in a 24-door calendar, but everything inside is well made: the washi tape, the brush roll, the sketchbook paper, the brushes. Nothing feels mass-produced or disposable.

Testing It Out: Following a Tutorial

To judge the whole package properly, we followed the day-one holiday wreath tutorial using the included 8-round brush, the metallic pans, and the sketchbook, paired with an existing set of watercolors.

The tutorial itself was excellent. It broke the process into simple, easy-to-follow steps and made the result genuinely achievable even for someone who rarely paints with watercolor. Techniques like building contrast on the berries and adding sprigs of darker green only where the composition felt empty are the kind of practical tips that make the tutorial component worth real money.

The metallic paints performed well too. The gold is strongly pigmented and works beautifully on its own for painted gold leaves, while the silver reads more as a shimmering top coat over other colors than a standalone hue.

Buying Advice

If you already paint with watercolor and want a premium seasonal experience, this calendar is one of the most thoughtful we have come across: high-quality tools, a coherent travel theme, and a genuinely impressive set of tutorials. If you are a beginner without any paints, or you mostly want supplies to build a collection from scratch, look at more affordable art advent calendars first.

Conclusion

The Craftamo 12 Days of Christmas Advent Calendar is a luxury tool box with an education built in. Everything inside is beautiful and well made, the artist curation gives it real character, and 4.5 hours of professional tutorials add value that most calendars cannot match. Its one meaningful limitation is the near-absence of paint, which makes it a complement to an existing watercolor kit rather than a starting point.