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. 

Scrappy camping

This week has been crazy busy, so I was looking forward to a relaxing weekend of camping with my family.  Since I was running out of time to complete this week's sketch challenge for Scrapbook Steals, I decided to pack a bag and take my scrappy stuff on the road with me.  The hardest part of scrapping away from home is figuring out what I'm going to need.  For this week's challenge, I picked photos and a hodgepodge of papers and decided to work with what tools I took along.  I spread out at the picnic table and scrapped my afternoon away.  I found that scrapbooking outdoors combines two of my favorite things. The only downside is the occasional gust of wind that blew my stuff around. 

After forcing myself to work with the few supplies I had, I came up with this layout:

I love that this week's sketch was a 2 pager.  I have sooo many photos and have a terrible time putting just one photo on a page.  This week, Kristy Lee read my mind and gave me great inspiration when she designed this 2 pg. sketch:

I also managed to work in another quick layout while I had my mess out.  I've come to love the giant photos that are showing up on scrapbook pages, so I decided to create a few enlargements of my own.  I ordered a 12x16 photo from Sam's Club (for less than $3), knowing it would be cut down to fit on my scrapbook page.  I paired a wonderful photo of my boys and their cousins with my super fave collection of the summer, Summer Fresh by Simple Stories, and came up with this quicky layout:

Thanks for stopping by!

Instant Friends

After spending a few days with scrappy friends in Chicago and seeing a little bit of CHA excitement, I couldn't wait to get into my crafty room and work on this week's sketch challenge for Scrapbook Steals.

This page features my son Caleb and his new friend Sam.  Sam's mom Melissa and I have been on-line crafty pals for some time and we finally got a chance to meet during a recent trip to Milwaukee while my hubby was attending a training.  I was super excited to meet Melissa in real life and the boys were excited to meet her kids and spend a day at the zoo.  Caleb was especially thrilled to learn that Melissa's son Sam was the same age as him.  There's something about being 7 1/2 that makes you the best of buddies.  The boys got along great and had a great day together, much like Melissa and I!  This layout reminds me of that fun day and makes me long for another visit with Melissa and her sweet kiddos.  Hopefully, next time our husbands can join us too!

For this layout, I used papers from the A Boy's Life collection by Echo Park along with some other scraps and pieces of random EP lines.  My title was made by fussy cutting letters from this piece of patterned paper from A Boy's Life collection:

I pieced together a sun and cut some clouds from other EP patterned papers.  My favorite feature is a little airplane and banner that I fussy cut from this patterned paper and popped up with foam dots:

And here's the original sketch, by design team member Katrina Hunt, that inspired it all:

Hoops

This week's sketch at ScrapbookSteals was another fabulous one-pager, created by guest sketcher Erin Schultz.  She did a great job bringing inspiration to this busy week.  With all of the new releases being revealed this week, and looking forward to my first trip to CHA, I was eager to spend a little time in my crafty space!  I couldn't find the perfect combination of two photos featured in the sketch, so I improvised and used several smaller photos.

Several months ago I was lucky enough to win the Making the Team collection from Trinity Paper Arts, and I decided it would work perfectly with these photos.  I paired the colorful prints on a plain piece of cardstock but it needed a little something more.  I decided to make some fun background prints by using a slightly deflated small rubber basketball I borrowed from my sons.  I painted a thin layer of craft paint on the basketball and "stamped" a  few places on my plain cardstock.  It took some trial and error and I messed up and had to flip the page over for another chance, but the "b side" images turned out just as I hoped.  The paint washed off the basketball easily with a little soap and water.
Here's the original sketch by Erin that inspired this week's project:

We have a winner!

I had so much fun reading the comments on the Scrapbook Steals blog hop.  It is so rewarding to receive compliments from friends and strangers!  Thanks to all of you who are now following my blog.

The winner of the Scrapbook Steals gift card will be announced on Wednesday, so stay tuned to their blog to find out who wins.  As promised, I am doing a little giveaway of my own.  I had 75 comments on my blog and used random.org to pick a winner.  The lucky comment was #28---Heather Conklin!  Heather, please send me a PM with your mailing address and I'll get your prize mailed out to you. 

I'm Totally Turquoise!

This week marks the end of another "gemstone" series at Scrapbook Steals.  Each week, they issue a sketch challenge with a chance to win a weekly scrappy prize.  At the end of a series of 10 sketches, they give away a super duper prize package that I'd love to have.   I've faithfully played along for over 100 weeks.  This turquoise series is very special to me, because  these layouts represent some very special memories.  I created the 1st layout while on a little scrappy vacation.  Back in May, I traveled to St. Louis to meet up with some girls that I met right here on Scrapbook Steals.  We spent the weekend chatting and scrapping and working on our layouts.  Week 6 is also very special, as I was asked by the lovely ladies at Scrapook Steals to be the guest sketcher for the month of June.  I created the sketch that inspired everyone else and it was so much fun!  Here are my 10 layouts:

Week #1- Meeting Lela (featuring my precious new niece)

Week #2- Notre Dame

Week #3- You

Week #4- appropriately named "4" wheelin'

Week #5- Thistleberry Farm

Week #6- What Matters Most (designed by yours truly, the guest designer for the month of June!)

Week #7- Boys Rule (my 100th project for Scrapbook Steals)

Week #8- hot cocoa

Week #9- Rump Roast

Week #10- extreme cuteness (featuring my brother's adorable kiddos)

Extreme Cuteness

After spending an incredible four days with my niece and nephew, I decided to make them the focus of this week's scrapbook layout.  I got to love on these two cuties during our first camping trip together.  Despite some miserable heat, we still managed to have a great time.  My boys love their cousins and we only wish we didn't live 6 hours from them. 

For this project, I used the super cute Summer Fresh collection from Simple Stories.  It's full of fun and vibrant prints that just scream summer.  I strayed from the original sketch just a tad and love how it turned out.  This is the tenth layout in the series at Scrapbook Steals.  Their weekly challenges are truly the highlight of my week! Here's the original sketch by Kristy Lee that inspired this layout: