Back to School

It's that time of year again!  Back to school means lots of organizing, scheduling, and planning.  I love to make back to school gifts for the kids' teachers.  They really do have an important job.  I know how difficult my own children can be sometimes and I can only imagine how difficult it is in a room with 20 of them.  I try to send in random tokens of appreciation throughout the year just so they know they are appreciated.   I'm a big fan of the altered paint cans, so I created a school themed can for my son's 1st grade teacher.  I filled it with goodies from Target's dollar bin: stickers, book marks, post its, stamps, ink, hand sanitizer, etc.  And this year my 4th grader has a male teacher.  I wasn't sure what to do for him so I searched Pinterest for something cool.  I found an image of crayons melted thru a glue gun.  And since I just happen to have an old glue gun, a slightly stained artist canvas, and a bucket full of random crayons sitting in my basement,  I decided to give it a try.  I put the "dirty" end of the canvas at the top so it would be covered by wax and no one would be the wiser.  Then I peeled crayons and shoved them into the business end of my glue gun.  The crayons weren't exactly the same size as glue sticks, so the trigger wouldn't feed them thru.  So I shoved them thru by hand and used a pencil as a plunger when I got down towards the end.  The project was messy, but I deemed it a success.  I added the teacher's name with Thickers and wrapped it all up in bubble wrap to keep it from breaking on the way to school.  Both presents were a huge success!