Mother's Day Gifts

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day and enjoyed spending the day with their families....

I had no idea what I was going to do for my mom until last week when she said, "I can't find any of my dishes to make the chicken and rice in". It was then that I knew what I needed to do. Trust me, it wasn't like I spent a ton of money, it was more thoughtful and just took some time. In fact, I only spent $17 or 18 bucks plus the $8 etching cream I have had in my cabinet for months... but I am sure I would have spent 3 times that had I bought these from someone...

Here is the first Pyrex dish I etched, the one side says Grammy's Goodies and then all around it are the ladybugs (it's kinda her thing):





For the larger one I wanted to do one that had her name, so I did one large ladybug and had it say Made with love by: Cyndia:




I was really worried about the raised Pyrex and other info on the back of the dish and that the etching cream would go under the vinyl that I had placed as a template, but it was perfect! I will totally be making these for other gifts in the future because they were easy, fun, inexpensive, and are truly a great gift (well I think so anyways)!

I look forward to my mother in law living here soon so that I can make her feel just as special (they are moving here, so sending something that they will just have to pack kinda seems like a pain to me). On that note I hope my daughter starts to tell my hubby how important Mother's Day is next year and that he should at least get me a card... you know because I birthed his child and all. But over all I had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend and really enjoyed what my mom helped Laci do for me! I will take some pictures and post it another day, because it was super stinkin cute!

So what do you think? I think for a fairly last minute gift (yes I was making these on Sunday morning <- I know I am a bad daughter) that they turned out amazing! My mom loved them!

TTFN~
Julie

Teacher Appreciation, Plus Free Studio Download and Tag Download

I am so excited to share with you today... Not only the gifts I have made but the tags and a .studio file that is a candy bar holder. Yup yup... yours truly figured out a free one for ya...

So today's gifts include a Hershey's Candy Bar that is in a wrapper that says... "1. Best Teacher {Bar None}". The wrapper I cut in green and then just cut vinyl to put on the cardstock, but you could add a tag or write it... get creative and make it your own!

Front:


Back:


I know they didn't need names but come on... I couldn't help it, I wanted to personalize everything. I know there is a big fat "DORK" in green stamped on my forehead! So do you like the wrapper? Well I got the original idea from here.

Now don't get me wrong, I love the wrapper and how they did it... However, I wasn't going to pay $3 bucks for something that A. I had to cut out myself and B. I could figure out the design on my silhouette myself. Now if I really had wanted to I would have printed out the design of the notebook paper and cut the design from that; however, as much as I liked the design I was lazy and figured I could jazz up the box myself... Because really it's just a box and they are going to rip it open to get the candy bar. So I put together a .studio file that I made available for download here so that you can download the .studio file and cut the box out of card stock and make your own... for any occasion. I like free, don't you?

When you open the design it will look like all the lines are straight cut lines like this...



.. but the ones that are perforation lines are there promise. You can check it by clicking on the cut lines on the top right and it will show kind of like this...



See the big awesome red arrow pointing to the scissors for ya... hehehe.

On to the second gift... My favorite thing I did yesterday was put together these adorable "I'm glad you were "mint" to be my teacher!" gifts...

Front:


Back:


I decided to decorate the back because really they can use the container over and over again after they eat all the yummy Andies Mints (which BTW I still have to get more, it takes 1.5 of them to fill up the entire container and I only bought 2 and needed 3 for both of them). I loved loved loved how these turned out. I originally saw the idea over here and instantly knew were to get them... one from my pantry, yes I just said pantry, and buy the other one at the store and empty it out for later use. What is it you ask? Crystal Light containers.. What what? Yup Yup... like this one...



So all you do is peal off the plastic and you are left with the awesome container to decorate and fill. Super sweet!

Oh, I forgot to mention... the tag, at least the middle white part like this...




It's ready for you to download the PDF from here, I will tell you the pic on 4 shared looks funny and has green on it. But when you download it, it looks like the picture above...

To get the other part I used this design from the silhouette online store and then separated out the sweet heart and then re-sized the scallop shape to 2.25 by 2.25. Then glued them together punched the hole and tied it on.

I used vinyl to put the names, dots, and initials on the containers. I loved loved loved how this turned out!

So what do you think of the gifts that I made yesterday?



Oh by the way... since we will drink the crystal light I don't count that as money spent, but the rest of the materials and gift stuff cost around $8 for all 4 gifts. Pretty awesome right? If I had bought everything so far I am only up to $16 for a total of 8 gifts. Pretty rockin right? So get to downloading the .studio file and make your own candy wrappers and then get to downloading the tags for the teachers...

Have fun with it and can't wait to see what you come up with using this stuff. If you use it and post something please link back and give a gal some credit... Thanks toots!

Oh, did I mention I LOVE LOVE LOVE comments and think you are the coolest person on the planet if you leave them? :o) So feel free to go make my day and leave an awesome comment!

TTFN~
Julie

Teacher Appreciation is next week... eek!

So I am trying to get ready for Teacher Appreciation. This year the kiddo has had two really great teachers. Ms. Heidi is the morning teacher, and Ms. Kristen is the afternoon teacher. It really has been a great year, so I wanted to make sure we showed them how much we appreciate them. Here are two of the five things they will get next week.

 

In the middle back are the two acrylic glasses that I personalized. Kristen likes the bolder zebra print kind of stuff so that is what she got on her acrylic glass. Heidi likes floral summery kind of stuff, so I did a hibiscus flower for her on her glass... well two actually.

In the front and on the outside are coasters. Heidi again got the flower theme, but unfortunately because of how the vinyl is made I couldn't do zebra for Kristen on the coaster, so she got purple... I am sure she will like it anyways! There are four of each coaster and a coaster holder for each teacher.

I am all about using what I have to create awesome things, so I went into my craft room and dug out the acrylic glasses that I bought months ago for $3 each (they were a great deal so I bought 9... I am down to 4 eek... what will a this hoarder do?) and then the coasters that I bought at the employee sale... don't ask, it was a weird thing to have at the employee sale, but I have had them for over a year. They were probably $1 or 50 cents for the whole thing (4 coasters and the stand in a box). Uhm, no brainier... awesome to make cool gifts with!

Anyways, so I have had everything and the vinyl for a VERY long time. So these two super cool and groovy teacher gifts cost me nada but the time spent putting them together... I mean at the time they did, but I don't count that because I have had the stuff for so long... but in case you are keeping tally... total comes to around $8 bucks for 4 gifts. Not that I am trying to be cheap, but really... you know you wish you were her teacher because these are pretty rockin'.

Bet you can't wait to see what else I am going to do, because I am only planning on spending $15 bucks more total for 6 more gifts... not all will be as fun as these two but they will still be great! You know curiosity is going to kill the crafter, so come on back in a couple days and hopefully I will have more finished and posted!

TTFN~
Julie