{ Teacher Gifts }

I have such fond memories of helping my mom make gingerbread houses at Christmas time to give as gifts to our teachers at school. She would spend all day baking the dough, then we would help her roll it out to cut into the different shaped parts of the house. We would careful help lay out the candy (and sneak a few pieces to eat) and then help place them on with frosting. She would write our teacher’s name above the little door with frosting, and we would proudly help carry it to their classroom the next day. It was something special that we had helped with, and it was homemade-the best kind of gift.

  I love all the great ideas I always see for teacher gifts in magazines and around the internet. I make mental notes of the ones I would love to try someday. I saw this idea a couple years ago and have wanted to do it ever since. It seems that whenever Teacher Appreciation week rolls around though in the spring I am overly busy, or it just sneaks up on us and a quick card is about all we can come up with. I decided that Christmas this year would be a great time to finally make this gift for my kids teachers.

It was so simple and inexpensive to make, and I LOVE how they turned out. I think I may end up making a few with my own kids names on them to display around the house. I started with some frames that I had laying around the house. I took out the glass in them-but a shadowbox type frame could be used as well.

I typed up their teachers names and printed them on regular cardstock, with the name at the bottom and the initial lightly printed on the middle of the page as a sort of guide for the crayon placement.

At the beginning of the school year, I had picked up a ton of extra school supplies to use throughout the year. I used one pack of crayons for each letter I did. At 25 cents a box, it was perfect. You could also use old crayons you had  that had become broken, since you end up cutting them anyways-it would lend a more sort of old vintage look I suppose. Since I was giving it for a gift I wanted to use new ones.

I had the kids help me lay out the crayons in the order that they wanted over the letter on a scratch piece of paper I had printed out. I put it in the frame so as to make sure that the placement was right with the frame in place. (A lesson I learned after doing the first one a bit too close to the top)

  I used a scratch piece for our layout so as not to mark on the final one. We alternated the direction of the crayons and which part of the crayon we had showing. Once we had the placement set, we cut away. I just used as old kitchen knife and cutting board. It made a big, but very colorful mess by the time we were done.

After everything was cut, we put it on for one last check, then glued everything down on the final cardstock sheet. I used a glue gun. On the examples I found online, most had used regular glue because the glue gun was too hot and would melt the crayons, but I didn’t have a problem with that. I really am just too impatient to wait for regular glue to dry. That and all the extra glue that I had bought at the beginning of the year mysteriously disappeared from the school supply box. Note to self, but lots of glue next year!

After I had finished the first two, I realized that I didn’t have anymore white cardstock left. I had to improvise a bit, but I love how the other two turned out. The next two I made were for Erika’s kindergarten teacher and teacher’s helper so it was fun to use the school lined paper design for the background. It made them look fun and playful, prefect for a kindergarten classroom. I was glad that I had kept around all my old scrapbook paper to use for projects like this.

I did these two the same way as the first two. One was super easy and quick, the other, the “S” was a bit more tricky with all the curves. I framed these two in white frames with the glass taken out as well.

After we were done, we printed out a cute tag that reads- “Great teachers start with the letter…” for the front. Add some fun polka dot paper, a big ribbon, and you have the perfect teacher gift.