Back to School Teacher Gifts

It's that time again!  School starts for my kiddos in less than two weeks.  I love to start off the year by sending in a gift for the teacher.  For my son's second grade teacher, I decided to create a "survival kit" filled with fun goodies for his new teacher.  I started with a plastic hardware organizer with removable dividers. 

I filled the individual sections with a variety of school supplies and items the teacher might need throughout the year.  I raided the dollar section at Target for back to school goodies.  To make sure the items I was shopping for would fit in my box, I carried one of the extra divider pieces with me in my purse.  I was able to hold the divider piece up to items in the store to see if they would fit inside the space.  From top to bottom, left to right the box includes pencils, rubber bands, small post-it notes, glue sticks, wooden stamps, hand sanitizer, pencil top erasers, a roll of reward stickers, star shaped erasers, bookmarks, vitamin C drops, a variety of chocolates, and a bottle of Tylenol for good measure.

For the finishing touch, I decorated the top of the box using scrapbooking supplies and ribbon.  Now we're ready for 2nd grade!

I struggled with gift ideas for my 5th grader's male teacher, so we decided to recreate a gift we did last year for the 4th grade teacher.  There are lots of melted crayon art ideas on Pinterest, and this gift was a huge hit last year, so we figured we couldn't go wrong.  For this project, you'll need a blank canvas, some crayons with the paper wrappers removed, an old pencil or stick to use as a plunger, and a glue gun that you never want to put glue in again.  After tediously peeling tiny pieces of paper off of crayons last year, I learned that the quickest way to remove the wrapper is to slice down the length of the crayon with a craft knife, allowing the wrapper to be peeled off easily.

I propped up my canvas at a slight angle with scrap paper taped behind it and on the floor underneath.

I started with red, going in ROYGBIV order, shoving the crayon into the business end of a hot glue gun and letting it melt onto my canvas.  The "trigger" mechanism doesn't actually work to feed the crayon through the gun, so I push the crayon through by hand and use a pencil to push it through once the crayon gets shorter.  I tried to take photos of this process, but I just didn't have enough hands.  The melted crayon shoots out all over the place and is sometimes hard to control, so you may want to practice this technique ahead of time.  When switching colors, it is also necessary to squirt out the muddled mess of mixed colors on a scrap paper and wait until the new color is flowing out before going back to the canvas.   Thanks to some crazy lighting, the colors aren't coming out well in my photos, making the purple color at the end look more like black.  You'll just have to take my word for it and use your imagination.

I ended up using a pencil and the handle of a paint brush to push the colors through.  Lots of extra wax will drip out from the gun, so use caution with the hot wax.  This is why you'll need to use an old glue gun or one that you will dedicate to melted crayons from here on out.  Your gun will literally be a hot mess when you're finished, but some of the dried crayon drips can be peeled off.

To finish off this project, I personalized the canvas with die-cut letters spelling out the teacher's name.  Now we're officially ready for the start of school!

Thanks for stopping by!  I'd love to hear about more fun ideas for teacher gifts. 

DIY Valentines

This year I decided to skip the cheesy little store bought Valentines we've always relied on.  Inspired by Pinterest, I set out to create some simple Valentines for my first grader.  I started by taking a photo of Caleb with his arm outstretched.  In order to avoid getting lots of other stuff in the background, I stood on his bed and took the photo looking down on him.

Then I used free photo editing software to add a red border, lots of hearts, and our personalized greeting.

Once I was happy with the design, I ordered 25 of these prints from Walmart.com and picked them up the next day.   I used a craft knife to make slits at the top and bottom of his outstretched fist and then threaded a sweet treat through his hand to complete the project.  We tried blow pops and pixy stix.

I liked the look of both of them, but ultimately settled on Pixy Stix because they were lighter and cheaper!  I especially loved that I didn't have to spend hours helping my first grader squeeze his classmates' names on those cheap little foldover cards.  And I'm even more excited to get these finished with a week to spare!  Thanks for looking!