Pott'd Advent Calendar Review (Spoiler: I Don't Recommend)

If you follow me on TikTok, you know that every year I like to pick an artsy/crafty advent calendar to unbox every day in December. In the past, I have done the Arteza, Woobles, and Stitchfinity advent calendars. This year I decided to do the Pott'd Advent Calendar, the 12 days of clay.

You can watch me unbox and make the projects for each day on my TikTok, @r100red, but I will list everything from each day here so this is your warning for spoilers ahead!

Day 1:

The day 1 box was the largest and had the most stuff in it. This box contained all the tools you needed to make pretty much everything else in the calendar. This box included:

• A paintbrush

• A large resealable package of air dry clay

• A roller tool

• A cutting tool

• A sponge

• Templates for all the projects in the calendar

• A QR code to the directions for the day 1 project

The project for this day was starting a gingerbread trinket dish. This required cutting out the template, rolling out clay, cutting out the shape using the template, and learning how to attach/smooth the clay together. Once the dish was completely formed, you set that aside to dry.

Day 2:

This box contained a sparkly gold star on a piece of wire and the QR code for the video tutorial for the day. This was for the project of making a tree ornament. This required using the air dry clay again to make a few different shapes and attach them together to form the tree shape. The star was the decoration for the top of the tree. This was also set aside to have time to dry.

Day 3:

This box had yellow and white polymer clay as well as a small ornament shaped cookie cutter and 2 wine charm wire rings. The video for Day 3 was instructions for rolling out and cutting your ornament charms. Baking instructions were not included in the video for day 3, but were in a separate video. After baking and attaching the clay to the rings, your wine charms are done. This is the first full project completed for the calendar.

Day 4:

This box contained a base coat in white, a gloss varnish, brown paint, red paint, black paint and white paint. In this tutorial, we painted our gingerbread trinket dish. This makes 2 projects complete for the box.

Day 5:

This small box had just red polymer clay in it. The project for this day was starting a holly candle holder. This required using one of the templates provided on day one, rolling out air dry clay, cutting out shapes, and attaching/smoothing clay out. This one needed to be place inside a bowl to dry in a slightly rounded shape. This also required rolling the red polymer clay into 3 balls to create berries and baking them.

Day 6:

This one gave us wire pieces to use for making ornaments. The video tutorial showed instructions for making a gingerbread house ornament utilizing the template provided on day 1 along with the air dry clay and the wire from the day 6 box. This was set aside to dry.

Day 7:

This one had green paint in the box with video instructions for painting our tree using the base coat, green paint, white paint, and brown paint. This makes another project completed.

Day 8:

This box had a single star cookie cutter. The project for today used the air dry clay to make a wreath ornament with a bow. Then the cutter was used to make stars for the wreath out of the polymer clay.

Day 9:

This contained the battery operated tealight candle to go with our finished holly candle holder. Today we finished painting that item so it was completed.

Day 10:

A single piece of ribbon to turn our gingerbread house into an ornament and instructions for painting that.

Day 11:

A single piece of ribbon to turn our wreath into an ornament and instructions for painting that.

Day 12:

A Pott'd Clayton face ornament with directions for painting his hat red.

Now some thoughts....

I do not think they planned this advent calendar out well at all. Day one was very item heavy and by the end they were including a single ribbon as an item for the day, super disappointing and felt like a joke. I would have preferred they split up items, especially templates, into different days so that it was more evenly spaced out. They could have split the clay up so that in day 1 you got just enough for the trinket dish project, day 2 had enough just for the tree, etc... then included the template and respective tools you need in that box. The paintbrush for example wasn't necessary to include until painting was starting. The wire for the ornaments would have been nice to have sooner to be able to make the tree a hanging ornament if we wanted to. Honestly, I would have been happy if all that came in the Day 1 box was the tool set with some kind of welcome video just introducing and explaining those things without a project yet. Then day 2 could have been the gingerbread trinket project template and clay.

I also didn't like that with all the templates in the day 1 box, you were spoiled for the type of projects that would be coming later on. When I purchase an advent calendar, I'm expecting a surprise each day. I don't want to have everything spoiled immediately. Same thing with the video tutorials. I liked that videos were provided, however, when you scroll down on the day 1 video there are all the videos for the entire calendar. The QR codes on my box also did not always link to the correct day. For the cost of this box, I expect the quality to be better than a mis-printed QR code.

I found the video tutorials to be lacking in direction and explanations. I would like things broken down more and explained better for a beginner. We are shown how to attach clay to other clay, but it is not explained why scoring it and creating a slurry helps the clay stay together and prevents it from falling apart more than if you just stuck the pieces together without doing this. I also found it strange that they had us use air dry clay for some projects and polymer clay for other projects without an explanation as to why. Especially for something like the wreath project where the polymer clay was used to make the star, but the bow was air dry clay. It would have been much easier to include a cutter for the bow and make one that way to glue on if we were already gluing on the stars anyway. Or just not bother with the polymer clay at all.

The items included were very cheap for the cost of this box. The box was $70 on a 50% off sale. The items included you can purchase separately at a local craft store for around $50 (see breakdown later on in the post). The quality of the items in the boxes were lacking. The polymer clay was the worst polymer clay I have every used. I attempted baking it several different ways and every time it bubbled up when in the oven. Even after conditioning for a long time and baking at lower temperatures it still bubbled. As a result, I ended up having to purchase my own supplies in order to complete the projects in the box. The star that came with mine for the tree was bent and so was the wire that came for making things into ornaments.

However, if including polymer clay, use it for more things! There is so much that could have been done with the extra polymer clay. For example, with my gingerbread house, I ended up making a few candies using my leftover red and white polymer clay. These were not super difficult designs. I just did a peppermint and some candy cane style things. I also did some pink tiny balls that look a bit like Nerds. But I think this would have been a really cool opportunity to teach us how to make some mini candies for it. They could have added some translucent and other colors and had us make some colorful gumdrops, maybe have us make the star going on the top of the tree ornament, use it for the bow on the wreath, make it it's own thing besides the wine charms - magnets would have been such an easy project for example!

I personally also felt like one paintbrush was not enough. I would have at least liked to have 3: 1 to use for the clay and dampening that, 1 for the paint, and 1 for the glazing. Have a couple different shapes and sizes would have been nice as well. For example, when painting the tree, it would have been nice if they provided a smaller brush to get the trunk better. A smaller brush also would have been nice for the details on the gingerbread trinket dish as well as the gingerbread house design.

I also assumed that this was being marketed more towards children, or at lease younger audiences. But why then include wine charms as one of the projects when that is not something for everyone? I think they would have been better off doing smaller ornaments, making charms for friendship bracelets/necklaces, or other jewelry type projects. This would have been more versatile and child-friendly. I also do not think the directions would be easy for children to follow in the way they are currently set up.

I don't think including painting the Clayton ornament was worth including. Sure, give us the ornament as a last day thing, but just give it to us as a fun accessory type thing to go with the box. Not only does the paint not stick to it, but as a last day project, this was pretty lame especially considering it followed 2 days of getting just a piece of ribbon.

Pros:

• The packaging was lovely. I really liked the designs and thought it was cute and felt pretty sturdy. The boxes for each day were actually a little bit of a struggle to open, so very solid.

• The projects were cute and had enough instruction to be able to complete them.

• The air dry clay was great quality. It felt like proper clay, smoothed out nicely, and attached to itself well. It did not dry out immediately after opening.

• The box did technically come with everything you needed to make all the projects except for glue to attach a few things.

• Paint was surprisingly decent quality, full coverage in 2-3 coats

Cons:

• Price, this box was $70 on a 50% off sale for items that did not equal that value and tutorials that were not very in depth.

• Tutorials were lacking in depth, beginner friendly instructions. I would have liked more explanations for why we were told to do things a certain way

• The quality of the items inside were questionable. My star for the tree was bent, my wire for the ornaments arrived bent, the polymer clay was the worst polymer clay I have ever used and bubbled up in the oven.

• Paint is already peeling off one of the projects

• Providing 1 piece of ribbon for 2 out of the 12 days was just... pathetic.

• Glossy varnish that was provided is still sticky after nearly over a week of drying

Overall would I recommend this box?

No, you would be much better off finding a few tutorials on TikTok or Youtube and purchasing the supplies you need for those items separately.

What I Would Recommend Instead:

• Crayola Air Dry Clay: $15 regular, was on sale for $12 when I looked

• Clay Tool Set: $6.50

• 50 Wine Charm Rings: $8 for 50 = $0.32 for this project

• Mod Podge Glossy: $4

• Craft Smart Paint: $0.80 each x5 = $4

• Sculpey Premo!: $4 each x3, can find sets/other brands for cheaper

• Set of Eye Pins 100 Piece or get ornament hooks: $2

• Ribbon: $6

• 25 Piece Brush Set: $7 for 25 = $0.28 Per brush

• Optional - Mini Cookie Cutters: $7, could just cut out shapes without these

Conclusion:

I think because they are used to just making clay kits, this company wasn't really in tune with what people look for in an advent calendar. If all this was just in a kit, I would still think it was overpriced, but it wouldn't have been so frustrating. In my 5 years of opening artsy advent calendars, this one was the most disappointing for what you get for the price. The Woobles advent calendar for example, was quite pricey and also provided video tutorials. That one felt much more in depth and beginner friendly in comparison and the time and effort spent on the items you made actually made it feel worth the money spent on it. This one felt way overpriced and did not feel like enough thought went into making it an advent calendar. This felt more like a clay kit style box that they just happened to separate into whatever boxes they felt like for the different days. It felt as if they started off really strong and then ran out of ideas for what to do in the daily boxes.

The quality of items in the box was a hit or miss for me. If the quality of the polymer clay was better, I think I would have a different opinion on this box as well. But having to purchase my own supplies because the ones provided were not working defeats the purpose of having the calendar to begin with. If all of the products provided were fantastic I would feel more confident recommending this if you were willing to pay the price for it. In addition to that, the cost was way too pricey for the QR codes to not match the day it was printed on. This is a basic quality control thing that should have been checked.

I do hope this company tries again next year with an advent calendar. I hope they are seeing the feedback customers are giving online and on their website. Nearly all the reviews I have seen were either 5 stars from people who haven't opened the calendar yet or 3 stars and below that have a similar opinion regarding supplies being split up better rather than being all in one chunk. I have not seen other people having issues with their polymer clay or QR codes so that might just have been me being unlucky, but I can only go based off of my own experience and unfortunately those 2 things played a large factor for me.

So what do you think? Did I completely waste my money? Am I being too harsh? And most importantly what should I get for next year for my advent calendar?