55 and counting!

For any of you who DIDN'T know, this is Teacher Appreciation week! :) and how I do appreciate Bryn's teachers VERY much.  I am involved in the PTO for his school, and this year we decided to make gifts to give all the teachers and staff at West Valley School during Teacher appreciation week.  In the PTO meeting, guess who they all turned and looked at for heading up the gift creating campaign? :)  Yep!  You guessed it.  Me!  And, I was gladly up for the job, provided I had a little help putting them together.

The volunteers to help with the project, were a little on the sparse side, and I was feeling a teeny bit overwhelmed before I had even started.  Then low and behold, my wonderful, super crafty friend, Leah, (whose children don't even go to West Valley!), came over and spent the entire afternoon cutting out purses and gluing them together. When she left, the purses were all cut out an mostly assembled and I was feeling like I really could pull it together.  What a great friend!!!

There are 55+ teachers/staff at the school, so it was a bit of craftiness to put them all together.  We are giving out little gifties on Monday, Wed, and Friday of this week.  Here are the Monday ones: Decorated water bottles with a little hand stamped tag and a pouch to hold a Crystal Light packet.

The tag measures 2 1/8" by 11 and scored at 2 1/4" and 8".  Then, simply fold the bottom scored part up and adhere with brads on either side, and use the 1 1/4" circle punch to punch the hole in the top flap to go over the water bottle.  I cut strips of designer paper 1 1/2" x 12" to put around the bottles and adhered with sticky strip.  Easy embellishments using the large and small butterfly punches layered together.  Simple gift, but definitely brought a smile to every recipient!

 Today's gift, was a little purse (using the SU purse die) with a chapstick inside that was donated by my generous boss, Connie Small, DDS.  I used Pretty in Pink card stock here -- a color that is soon to retire, and embellished the fronts of the purses with a little rossette -- from the rossette trim in the spring mini catalog -- simply snip off a rossette, dab its petals on an ink pad, and you have an instant classy embellishment.

 For the guy teachers, we made this "manly version".  Simple tri-fold with a section of designer paper on the front and back, and a star embellishment.  Sorry the photo isn't better...

I somehow missed taking a photo of the Friday giftie -- it is a pint jar filled with mulit colored salt water taffy (courtesy of Costco).  I punched out a circle of designer paper (using my 2 3/8" circle punch -- which fits perfectly on a narrow mouth jar lid, just FYI) and adhered that to the top of the lid, then tied a cute stamped tag around the top with colorful ribbon.  Another PTO person is delivering those, as I am working on Friday, so she came and hauled them all away -- thus no photos -- sorry!  I feel glad to have them finished, but is sure was rewarding to see the smiles on their faces as we went from class room to class room delivering our gifts.

To all you teachers out there, THANK YOU!!! for all you do for our children!!!

If you haven't checked out the retiring stamps and accessories, take a look!  There are some fabulous goodies on sale while supplies last.

Happy stamping and crafting to each of you!