Saturday, December 17, 2011

DIY Teacher Gifts

    It's almost Christmas!  Yaaaaaaaaay!!!  I had hoped to have this particular project done a few weeks ago, in case anyone wanted to do the same thing for this year, but who am I kidding.  The queen of procrastination doesn't do anything a few weeks before it needs to be done.  So what is this project I speak of?   Teacher gifts!  This is my first year to do teacher gifts, and wouldn't you know that between his two schools Ian has two teachers and three paraprofessionals (I'm guessing that's a fancy word for teacher's aide).  Of course, I didn't want to spend an arm and a leg, so I thought I'd make gifts.  I found this wonderful tutorial for flower pins on Pinterest:

http://www.notmartha.org/archives/2010/04/23/a-flower-pin-for-you-favorite-mom/

So cute!  I didn't want anything too "teacher-y," and I decided that this would be a nice gift for any lovely lady.  So I went to Hobby Lobby and bought all of my supplies, including the little boxes to wrap them in.  I spent approximately $10 for all of it.  Later I went to WalMart and bought Dove chocolate to put in each little box.  That cost around $8 for two bags.  Here's the final project:
    I chose five different colors and then let Ian decide who got what color.  I think they turned out great.  It was fairly easy, but time consuming.  Each flower took approximately an hour and a half.  Of course, that includes a number of distractions.  "I'm hungry."  "I need something to drink."  "Wesley's in the bathroom and he wants you."  "Put the cat down right now!"  "Ian just hit me."  "What's that gross stuff on the floor?"  This list could go on and on and on.  I had to stop every ten minutes.
    On the link I posted above you will find a link to the tutorial and also a link titled "a few notes on what I learned."  I recommend you read the one about what she learned as well.  It has some helpful tips.  And I'll add to that.....  Do not use too much glue!  Otherwise you'll have a terrible mess.  Those little glue strings will be everywhere and your flower will look like it has a spider living in it.  Not pretty.  Another helpful note.....  Don't freak out over cutting the petals.  When I first realized I had to free hand cut each and every petal, I almost hyperventilated!  I am very much a perfectionist and I had no idea how I was going to make each petal the exact same.  Good news....  You don't have to!  I spent minutes on each of the first few petals trying to make them all the exact same size.  Minutes is a long time when you have 40 petals times 5 flowers to cut out!  I soon realized it didn't matter.  Because you're cutting each petal from squares that are the same size, they'll all be the same size.  Who would have thought....  They may not be the exact same shape, but you can't tell.

    So to wrap this up.  I put a piece of tissue paper in each box and threw some candy in it.  I figured anyone who works with 4 year old's all day deserves a little bit of chocolate.
Then I put the flower on top.
Wrapped it up.  Closed the box. Voila!
Five teacher's gifts for around $18!  I'd say that's pretty thrifty!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Rachel


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