I want to share with you today a fun and easy DIY teacher appreciation gift that not only is beautiful but something you kids can actually help you make! In my experience the kids are so much more excited to present a gift that they helped make than something their mom is forcing them to hand over. For this project I let my daughter pick out the color flowers we were going to make – pink and green – her teacher’s favorite colors!

Supplies:

• Bloom printable (12×16 or 8×10)
• White canvas
• Spray Adhesive
• Tissue Paper
• Brads
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Glue

1. Print out your Bloom printable sign. I have a large format printer so I printed it at home but if you want the 12×16 size Costco prints 12×16 photo enlargements for $2.99. You can also print out the 8×10 at home, you’ll just want to size your tissue paper flowers accordingly.

2. Spray the spray adhesive on the back of your print out, focusing on the corners and apply it to your canvas. I’ve seen great priced canvas at Walmart lately, as well as weekly sales at the craft stores.

3. Fold your tissue paper, 2 or 3 sheets stacked together, into 2 and 3 inch squares.

4. Punch or poke a hole in the center of your square and insert a brad.

5. Cut your square into a circle.

6. Separate each layer of tissue paper by pulling straight up and crumpling into a cylinder. Repeat until all layers are separated and “crumply.” This is the part your kids will love!

7. Fluff your layers out to behold your beautiful flower creation.

8. Glue flowers to your canvas.

I really love the multi-color flowers, they are so much fun to make.

At the last minute I decided to add some “stems” to our canvas with a metallic marker and before handing it to her teacher I will have my daughter write her name on the bottom.

If you are looking for more great (and fast) Teacher Appreciation craft ideas please make sure you check out all the amazing ideas being shared during this round of Craft Lightning!

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One of my favorite, and most popular, monogram tutorials is on how to make these ridiculously awesome ring dishes. Perfect for almost any lady on your gift list!

Another very popular post is my DIY Ornaments for Boys and Tweens. I think all girls, no matter their age, would adore these monogrammed ornaments and they are super simple to make.

In keeping with the gold monogram trend I made this monogrammed clipboard for myself last year and I am still using it! I couldn’t think of any of my daughters’ teachers who wouldn’t love a chic monogrammed clipboard.

This is one of my all time most used and favorite pins in the (relatively short) history of Pinterest. It teaches you how to use free files to make an endless array of monogrammed stickers and labels. I couldn’t believe how easy they were to make and they came out amazingly professional looking.

I made this serving tray two years ago from a $15 tray I found at Target! The great news for you is that they brought these amazing serving trays back again this year AND they added a new size as you can see from the gold tray I posted on my Instagram account!

Another one of my favorites from my Instagram feed is this Charming Charlie necklace that I personalized. For help on how to cut and apply a monogram you can check out my Vinyl 101 tutorial.

And last, but certainly not least, monogram gifts don’t always have to come in the physical form. A personalized digital monogram that can be used as a phone, tablet, or laptop screen image is also a wonderful way to show someone that you are thinking about them. I LOVE Monogram App available in the Apple App Store.

So those are just some of many DIY monogram holiday gifts that you can make this year. And monogrammed gifts are just for the holidays they are the perfect gift for any occasion. You can turn a plain jane mason jar, tumbler, coffee cup, frame, or clipboard and turn it into a one of kind, from the heart gift with just a little vinyl decal or a carefully painted set of three letters. If you don’t have a Silhouette CAMEO or Portrait, now is a wonderful time to get one. Black Friday deals are happening at Silhouette until December 8, 2014.

Happy holiday gift making!!

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Supplies:

Champagne flutes (4 pack at Target for $9.99)
Gold Vinyl
Silhouette CAMEO or Portrait
Circle Confetti (Design ID #45405)
Cheers (Design ID #24001)
Weeding hook
Transfer paper or contact paper
Scissors

Directions:

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The supplies you need are very simple and very easy to customize – the shapes and the colors are all interchangeable, just pick what you want!

Supplies:
Glass Ornaments
Fine Glitter
Satin Angel wings
Coordinating 3/8″ Ribbon
Funnel (or a piping tip as I used)
Pledge Floor Care clean & shine or the cheap non-aerosal hair spray works in a pinch, too
Glue gun and glue sticks

Step 1) Remove the ornament tops and swish around a small amount of Pledge or hairspray. Dump any access liquid into your next ornament.

2) Place a funnel, or icing piping tip, into the top of your ornament and pour some glitter in. Start rolling the glitter around to cover all the sides, adding more glitter if needed.

Step 3) Place caps, carefully, back on to the ornaments.

Step 4) Hot glue angel wings to the back of the ornament and tie a coordinating ribbon through the loop for hanging (or use an ornament hook).

It was really THAT simple! Now you have a beautiful ornament to adorn your tree with the memory of loved ones or give ask gifts.

Of course, you could take it one step further and add some personalization – with paint, vinyl, or stickers.

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Supplies:

Wide mouth mason jar (I use Ball Canning jars)
Vinyl decal or sticker
Mod Podge
Paint (I used black and white but you can use any two colors)
Glitter
Paint brushes
Painter’s tape
(optional) Acrylic sealer

Place your decal on the mason jar wherever it has the least about of raised lettering. I cut this snowflake out on scrap vinyl with my Silhouette CAMEO but you can use any shape, any color, or any sticker.

Next, apply a light layer of Mod Podge over your decal/sticker – this will ensure that instead paint that might get under the decal/sticker edge it is clear Mod Podge instead. Let dry 15 min or so.

Next, starting right under the rim, make 2 stripes with 1″ wide painter’s tape. Paint the exposed glass with one of your colors.

Let the first coat dry. Paint a 2nd coat of the same color and then before the 2nd coat dries pull off the painter’s tape.

Using a flat edge brush I hand painted the black stripes. I did this for two reasons: 1) I am very impatient and I did not want to wait for the white to completely dry before moving on and 2) Paint doesn’t necessarily want to stick to glass, especially acrylic paint, so I feared that covering up the white with painter’s tape to paint the black would result in the white paint pulling off of the glass. Hand painting 2 stripes is pretty simple, you an totally do it!!

Before the 2nd coat of your 2nd paint dries it’s time to pull up the decal or sticker you used. Using a snowflake might not have been the best way to go, it wasn’t easy pulling up all those points of the snowflake. I think a Christmas Tree or reindeer would have been a little easier. As you can see below I had a little issue in the lower left hand side of the snowflake – but no big deal I just used my painted brush and hand brushed in the parts that peeled away when I was removing the decal.

The only thing left is to brush Mod Podge all inside your jar and shake away with the glitter. Once you’ve got a good coat you an choose to spray acrylic sealer inside the jar, on top of the glitter, to help it from shedding.

To add some extra shimmer to all that glitter drop in an LED tea light, you can pick them up in almost every candle section these days. I would just hold back on placing a real open fame due to all the glitter and sealer.

The post DIY Stripes and Glitter Mason Jar appeared first on Shes {kinda} Crafty.

Supplies:
– Silhouette (or any other vinyl cutting machine)
– Vinyl (outdoor gloss vinyl if your dish will get wet)
– Contact or Transfer paper
– Small ceramic dish – I used “Tasting Bowls” from Libbey (found on Amazon) but any small dish will do
– Ruler

Measure the inside bottom of your tasting dish. Mine was just shy of 2 inches in each direction. Using your design software, Silhouette Studio in my case, and design your monogram* and size it smaller than the dimensions of your dish. Cut out your monogram on any color or patterned vinyl and use your contact paper or transfer tape to press your design on to the dish. That’s all there is to it!

*The Silhouette Store has the script monogram letters but you will have to buy each letter individually. You can also buy the script font Vines from Front Bros as well as the Circle Monogram font. For a free alternative to Vines you can try KK Monogram that is available for free on DaFont.com.

I just really love all things gold when it comes to decorating and accessorizing right now so I had to make one using this shiny gold vinyl.

It’s just so elegant.

But then again I love all things polka dot and black is so timeless that I just had to make one using this great patterned vinyl, too!

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Supplies:

Cookie sheet from the dollar store
Printable Magnet Paper – use the code BIRTHDAY to get 40% off until October 1, 2014
Printer
Silhouette Studio & cutting machine (CAMEO or Portrait)
Vinyl (optional, used for the haunted house)
MTF Sweet Halloween Dings font (free for personal use)

I absolutely fell in love with this font when I saw it on Under A Cherry Tree‘s Facebook feed. It takes an intermediate knowledge of Silhouette Studio to figure out how to release the compound paths of the dingbats and color in each piece. If you have interest in learning how to do that please let me know so I can create a step by step tutorial. Once I got the first one done though I was hooked and they got easier to make.

Once I had all of my characters and monsters colored in the way I wanted I arranged them on an 8.5″x11″ page with the registration marks turned on so that I could use the print and cut function. Then you just put the printable magnet paper in the printer just as if it was a sheet of cardstock. I didn’t have to make any adjustments. Once you’re finished printing your magnet paper let the ink dry for a minute and two and then secure it, magnet side down, to your cutting mat. You want to make sure it’s very secure to the mat so there is no shifting. I cut the printable magnet paper with my blade set to 5.

If you’d like more info on print and cut you can always refer back to this post on Print and Cut 101.

And just to add a little more fun to the storyboard I used some black chalkboard vinyl to cut out this haunted house (design from the Silhouette store) and stuck it onto the cookie sheet.

I had a lot of fun playing with the board before I gave it to my daughter to play with.

She made up a very cute story about trick or treating and monsters that drop from the sky – she went on for 10 minutes or so. Non. Stop.

Using the chalkboard vinyl just added another dimension to her creative play.

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If you need to bring Sharpie markers for your back to school supplies, or let’s face it, if you just want shiny new markers for yourself (because who doesn’t!) then you’ll want to head to Staples . Starting August 10th all Sharpie fine and Ultra Fine markers and highlighters will be on sale while supplies last. As you can see I picked up these 12 packs for $7 each!

That $7 was the total price of my project. I grabbed a scrap piece of wood from the pile in our garage (you’ll need about 8 inches) and used some spray paint I found in the garage. I was going to paint this Sharpie holder Pantone’s color of the year, Radiant Orchid, originally with just a chalkboard front but I went for the all out chalkboard finish. Either way would be very pretty.

Supplies:

Step 1) measure out your drill points using a pencil, ruler, and straight edge. I wanted the back row off-center so you could see all the pretty colors.

Step 2) Cut your wood down to size. Obviously you don’t need a big fancy saw like this but since we have it, I try to get our money’s worth out of it! Don’t forget your safety goggles.

Step 3) Next you’ll need to pick the right size drill bit for the Sharpies you’ve picked out. To do this just lay your marker end to end with your bits until you’ve found the correct size.

Step 4) Now comes the fun part. Once you’ve put your safety goggles back on you’re ready to start drilling. Once again, you don’t need this big, fancy drill press. Your standard drill will do just fine, just make sure you don’t drill through the entire depth of the wood. Drill all 12 holes, exactly where you marked them.

Step 5) Sand down all the edges, including all the holes you just drilled to make sure you have a smooth, splinter-free surface. Then prep your paint area, or spray paint area in my case, and get to painting! I did 1 coat of primer and 2 coats of the chalkboard spray paint per the directions on the back of the can.

Step 6) The hardest part – you have to let chalkboard paint dry for 24 hours before it’s ready to be primed. Prime your chalkboard surface per the directions on the can or bottle which usually just includes rubbing chalk over the entire surface and wiping off.

Once you’ve finished priming the surface the holder is ready to go! I used a white chalk marker to write the teacher’s name on the front and to label all the holes with the color marker it holds. Of course you can write anything you want on it, that’s the beauty of chalkboard paint!

Isn’t that a fun way to gift a teacher Sharpie® markers? And I know not everyone may be inclined to take out your drill so I am sure your kid’s teacher would also love them presented just like this…

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This fun mason jar themed tag was our meet-the-teacher/open house gift. I can’t help but love a good mason jar pun!

New Kids on the Block (NKOTB to the cool kids) rocked my socks off in the 5th grade and these cute write stuff tags are great for friends of any age!

These next tags, along with the great gift idea, were originally posted teacher appreciation week but I think they work great for any occasion!

Who couldn’t use a sweet treat in their lunchbox on the first day? Just print and staple to a fun size pack of M&Ms and you will be racking up the cool mom points!

And last, but certainly not least, the most Scent-sational tag of them all! This one was from our pre-school days, way before we knew what the fox says.

The post Back to School Free Printables appeared first on Shes {kinda} Crafty.

Supplies:

Then I filled the other words. I won’t lie, this part was the hardest because I had chosen this pallet type sign and had to work with the gaps. I wasn’t able to put the words exactly where I would have liked.

Once you’ve placed all your vinyl on the sign, and given them a good rub down, comes the most important part: slather that baby in Mod Podge! I like to use a cheap foam brush when applying Mod Podge and for this project I just used a medium layer so it would dry quickly.

Give the Mod Podge about 20 minutes to dry and then go ahead and paint your entire sign. I kept it to one coat because that’s the look I was going for but you can put as many coats on as you need to achieve your desired look.

Here’s a close up.

I like to pull my vinyl stencil up before the paint is fully dry because I find you have less instances of the paint peeling. As you can see, using the Mod Podge really sealed the stencil to the sign and the final result is as crisp as you can get it!

I added a couple little vinyl fish on top the finished sign to fill in some of the empty space I wasn’t happy with. Here is the sign hanging up in the lake house of our lovely weekend hosts. Once day we hope to own a lake house, too, but for now we love be invited down to the lake!

And just because I love this photo I look, my little one thinks that Like is Better at the Lake, too!

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