Teacher Appreciation Gifts

As an instructional math coach I work with over 40 high school math teachers. I wanted to share with each of them how much they are appreciated so I made crafty gifts. I am extremely thankful for Pinterest as I found almost all of my ideas there.

Gift #1: Marvelous & Magnificent Teacher
I found the glass cruets at Joanns in the wedding section. I used Inkscape to create the label which I have shared here and imported it into Silhouette Designer software to complete a print and cut.

Gift #2: Thank You Pillow Box
The pillow box is from Lettering Delights and was the perfect size for a 100 Grand. I used Make the Cut to cut them all and tied baker's twine around the flap. The little buttons are from Tuesday Morning where I purchased them at a going out of business sale.

Gift #3: Thanks for the 'Extra' work
These were made specifically for the Math Leadership Team. We meet once a month and the teachers are always taking on extra responsibilities. They are a wonderful team to work with and our teachers in the county benefit greatly from their leadership.

Gift #4: Thank you with Sharpies
I have been saving Crystal Light plastic canisters without any idea what I would do with them. Then I found this site where there was the idea and a free printable tag. I simply printed the tag and cut it out using scissors. Yep, no fancy cutting machine for this one. Just simple scissors and my xyron machine. This was the gift specifically for my son's teacher.

Gift #5 Lemonade
These were simple to make. I cut the strips at 2.5" wide and 10" long and scored it at 3" and 7.5". I used a Martha Stewart punch to cut the circle and an EK Success punch for the border.

Gift #6 M&M packs
After making gift #1 I had an entire bag of m&ms left. I made these treat bags and adorned the tag with washi tape and a small button.

I really enjoyed handing out the treats each day and letting the teachers know they are appreciated. Hope this has inspired you to send a little treat. Thanks for stopping by and have a blessed day!

Happy New Year 2013

Happy New Year. Yeah.... I know {sigh}... I haven't posted anything since my October Halloween treats. I wonder if I even have anyone who looks at my crafty ramblings anymore. I promise have made some treats since then. There were candy bar treat boxes for Thanksgiving and Fisher and I made some turkeys out of trail mix and pipe cleaners. For Christmas I made a variety of treats. I have over 40 teachers that I work with and I had each of them a little crafty gift. I even have pictures of some of the creations. But now that the holidays are over I'm not sure sharing them at this point would be proper blog etiquette. Maybe I'll write them and schedule them for next year {can you schedule posts that far away????} or maybe I'll just pin them on Pinterest.

Anyway, I welcome anyone who takes a glimpse at what I've worked on tonight. It's been relaxing and a much needed activity. {Today has brought me very sad news and crafting is real therapy for me.} I saw these "ready to bake" sugar cookies at the grocery store on sell for $0.99 for 2 dozen. I snatched up three boxes with this New Year's treat in mind.

I created a simple print and cut using the Silhouette Designer Software (but you could easily do it without designer.) Thanks to a quick Google search I found an easy tutorial here on how to get my words to wrap.

 I even have enough cookies left over to send to Fisher's class tomorrow. Isn't the snowman cute?

I really enjoy making treats for others. It is great to surprise someone with a "thinking of you" gift. Well, I suppose that is enough for tonight. Have a blessed day!

Classroom Halloween Treats

October has been a very busy month and last week was the busiest. I started with staff development for all of the high school math teachers in my county on Monday. A PLC session for Course 1 teachers on Tuesday. Then I traveled to the state Math Leadership Conference on Wednesday, followed by the state math conference on Thursday & Friday (of which I had a part in planning). I also presented two sessions. Saturday I coordinated the Fall Festival at the church consisting of a Trunk or Treat, hot dog supper, hayride and bonfire. On top of all that I started getting sick. Spent the entire day in bed on Sunday and went to the doctor today.

Feeling much better, I finished the classroom treats for my son's classroom. I found this idea on Pinterest and my son thought it was hilarious. Using a large container of cheese puffs, we filled small snack bags. (We also discovered that our little dog loves cheese puffs.)

I used Frank's Friends Alpha from Lettering Delights for the pumpkin and designed the entire card in Inkscape. I imported into Silhouette Studio, enclosed with a rectangle, filled the page, and did a print and cut.

I couldn't resist the second project. (Again, I pinned it on Pinterest.) I purchased mandarin oranges in individual containers and used a Sharpie to draw faces.

That's all the projects I have for today. I have a few planned tomorrow for my colleagues. Thanks for dropping by and have a blessed day!

A Sympathy Card

My SILs mother passed away this past week and I wanted to make a special card for her. I was inspired by Jin Yong's post on Simple Shapes at Under A Cherry Tree.

The entire project was done with MTC and cut with my Silhouette Cameo. I started with a 3" and a 2.5" square, stacked them, and did a Boolean Join. Next, I copied and pasted (in place) three other squares. I overlapped them slightly and welded them together. The words are Script MT Bold font with the letters welded together. I placed the words just touching the frame and did another weld. The butterfly is from LDs  Cloud Nine set. I created a shadow with blackout and was finished within a few minutes.

On the inside I printed "... and the greatest of these is love." to complete the verse from 1 Corinthians 13. The bling was put on with my irock tool.

I know it has been awhile since I posted so I don't know if anyone out there even reads these posts; but if you do, thanks for letting me share. If you are so inclined please pray for my SIL. This was sudden and she needs to feel God's strength to help her through.

Have a blessed day!

End of Year Teacher Treats

I am so proud of Fisher. He got the Excellence in Reading & Math yesterday at the end of the year awards ceremony. He was so excited about finishing Kindergarten and of course starting summer vacation. I am in awe of how well he is reading. I can teach high school students math but am amazed at how elementary teachers teach students how to read.

To show my gratitude I made his teachers and the ladies in the office some end of the year treats. For the ladies in the office I put together this apple from the Fall Harvest Favor Box from SVG Attic and placed two small caramel brownies inside. (Unfortunately I didn't take the best pics so it is difficult to see that they are apples.)

For his teachers, I made these cute flip flop boxes from My Graphico. They were easy to assemble. I placed two caramel brownies in each of these too.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a blessed day!

Birthday Flower

My niece turned one and so I made her a birthday card. The flower is from the Mulberry Lane Too svg from Lettering Delights. I brought it into the Silhouette Design software, traced several times for the different layers, and then cut them out.

I used my Cuttlebug to emboss the flower with Swiss Dots folder. For the stem and leaves I simple used an embossing tool to create the vines.

Have a blessed day!

Easter Treat Buckets

For my birthday last month my DH got me a wireless printer and the Silhouette Cameo. I had been talking about how much easier it would be to do print and cut projects. I had been able to do it with my Cricut but it was not an easy process. He listened and totally surprised me.

Here is my first project using my new tools. I found these cute little buckets in the $1 bin at Walmart so I snatched up 5 of them for Fisher's teachers and ladies at school. 

Although I didn't do anything to the bucket (they came with the sticker on the front) I did create several little goodies to fill it up.

These are cranberry walnut chocolate granola clusters. The label was created with the Lettering Delights Easter Beasties. I used a 3"x 2.5" rectangle and designed the image in the bottom half. The Silhouette Cameo smoothly cut out the rectangle which I then folded in half and stapled to the bag.

These jelly bean bags were made the same way using Easter Beasties as well. Fisher picked out the saying "You Crack Me Up" which was one of the graphics provided in the set.

For the cards I used the chick from the Animal Buddies set from Lettering Delights. The scallop was cut from a nestability and the frame was embossed using the Cuttlebug. The stamps are Studio G Easter set.

I purchased chocolate bunnies and covered the boxes. Again the quote is from LD's Easter Beasties. The paper is from DCWV The Sweet Stack.

I included a Cadbury egg and some other pieces of candy in the bottom. Here are the finished buckets. We delivered them this morning.

I want to say a big THANK YOU to Jin Yong of Under A Cherry Tree. I have learned so much through her video tutorials. Take a look. She has some wonderful projects.

Have a blessed day!