TEACHER'S GIFTS

Morning, it's Saturday and the six weeks school holidays stretch out in front of us and before we know it we'll be gathering the uniform and heading back, so I thought it would be a good time to show what gifts we managed to make in the last week, two sets made in an evening with the help of said 11 year old and hubby!

First up the breakfast club gifts, inspired by Michelle's post which is here

The pencil idea was simply genius and really made it look the part, then I wrapped some boxes of maltesers with a single sheet of 12 x 12 - said 11 year old said I needed to cross through the word handmade on these papers because I hadn't made the chocolates LOL! It was one of those serendipity moments when I needed some papers to go with the plant pots and found three sheets all exactly the same stating the word chocolate on them!

All wrapped up in cellophane with twiddly ribbon

And all three finished, so this was Monday nights activity

Then Thursday night we created this star book

Completed

 And another shot, apparently it brought a tear to the eyes of more than one member of staff when opened on Friday

 And the other book

 Opening up

 Opened out

 Then male teacher's gifts, rather than a star book I used my first attempt at Steampunk Andy Skinner styley

 The back

 Close ups

 And the other side

 And then a slightly out of focus shot - sorry it was exceptionally late!

 And the clipboard, again, not the best of photos but it was midnight!

Wrapped up the star books, with card and tolberone!  Photographed on the only clear surface in my room on Thursday night (and Saturday morning but don't get me started).  The printer!

 And there we have it, I got hugs from Mrs Williams and Mrs Powell who we made the star books for and big thanks from Mr Bratt.  It was an emotional day for said 11 year old and he held it together really well, but the hug with Mr Bratt was the point that tipped him over the edge and we sat in the car on the way home and he tried really hard not to cry, but then I told him to just have a good cry because sometimes thats what you need!  

TEACHER GIFTS

 Well as we fast approach the last week of school these are the teaching assistant gifts created this year - altered clipboards, I found loads of inspiration on the internet, found some 'blanks' at a large national stationery supplier and set too with papers selected by said 11 year old!

Forgot to photograph this one post ribbons but you get the idea, the letters at the bottom cut with my Big Shot, to try and make it more durable the bottom section of each clipboard has been mod podged

 I included a ribbon at the bottom of this one

 These papers were out of one of those massive stacks that have chunks of co-ordinating papers

 This one proved interesting to try and fit a rather long name on it!

I was pleased with these once done, they are all wrapped up upstairs ready for distribution next week!

Well here we are only days away from Christmas and I'm still not feeling particularly festive, we did however, manage a Panto on Sunday - oh yes we did!  Which was very good apart from the child behind kicking the chair constantly through the performance, strangely enough I would have stopped said 11 year old if it had been him when he was that age but the Mum seemed oblivious bless - the joys of being oblivious it must be nice!

The best part of the panto has to be the Dame - he is absolutely hysterical and one of the main sponsors of the panto this year were Sheffield's Supertram so the part when he came on stage dressed as the tram was pure comic genius so very funny!  But it still didn't manage to get me into the festive spirit - mmm how do you get into the Christmas mood?

Now the giggle tonight, well me and hubby trying to order Domino pizzas from Pizza hut - most confusing - we didn't realise until it was too late - but it did make us giggle (quite a lot).  I know pizza shouldn't be something you have for Sunday lunch, but in all honesty we couldn't be bothered with cooking once we got home, it was enough to sort showers out without the thought of cooking.

So your challenge today is to tell me what gets you into the right frame of mind for Christmas?  Is there a particular point where you are 'there' or perhaps an activity you do?  A bit of quiet reflection?  Anything you like?

Hope you have all had a good weekend.

MY FIRST CHRISTMAS ALTERABLE AND THAT VOODOO VIXEN BOOK

Good Morning Fellow Bloggers

How are you this morning?  I hope I find you well and settled for a nice chat, grab a chair and virtual cuppa tea or coffee whichevers your preference, we've got hot chocolate if you're finding it a bit on the chilly side!

Anyway I had so many lovely comments on my blog for the pink baby book I made using Voodoo Vixen's (Annette) I thought I'll go and see if I can hunt them down - thankfully Annette has been amazingly helpful and put all her mini book tutorial links on the right hand side of her blog - how cool is that - so I found it straight away!

So this is the link to Annette's book for all of you who want to have a go at this amazing book!


http://scraphappenshere.blogspot.com/2009/06/instructions-for-organiser.html

Now just to show you how versatile this book is - this link takes you all the posts I've done on this book!

The Pink Baby Version Shown RecentlyThe Voodoo Vixen Minibooks I've Made Using these Same instructions!


Now a couple of you will remember a few weeks ago that I decided that the 'two boxes' of alterables was a little extreme so I've set myself the dual challenge of whittling it down to one box and to creating Christmas gifts with it along the way.

The first item has now been completed, some time ago hubby made me a 'book box' which I painted up in red ready for the gorgeous book I was making to go inside and then I saw fit, to make the book too deep so he had to make me another one which means the original has been languishing in the bottom of my alterables box ever since.  Perhaps because it was already painted it made it an ideal starting point. 

Then I found out a lovely pack of 'free papers' I got with a magazine recently - that were Christmas themed, added a few sheets or bargain papers from my recent purchases.  I then grabbed some cardstock out from my stack of green cardstock, I actually picked the card that I thought I would find hardest to use in a layout, because I knew it would be covered in papers so the background card wasn't such a major issue provided it co-ordinated with the papers and away I went.  Then set too creating a mini book and box to give to said 11 year old's male teacher this Christmas because I know it will be his child's first Christmas and I thought it would be nice for this young family to document this down, I'll pop in some double sided tape for them to use in the book and hope they manage to fill it with some great photographic memories of the day!

So without further ado - the outer box

the inside

The book

the inside of the book (quite a few pages so I'll put these together)

The back of the book

Back in it's box

And finally a matching card and envelope

I'll be sharing more of these that I can (can't share the 'family' ones (if they get made LOL) on here until after the event - but teacher gifts are not a problem) I've already completed an altered picture - so I'll come along and share this soon!

TEACHER GIFTS

Morning all thought I'd do a quick blog post showing the teacher gifts I made for end of term - quite literally the night before they were due to go out - nothing like leaving things to the last minute.  The instructions came from the "Making Gifts" magazine which I only managed to get a couple of copies of before it seemed to disappear out of circulation.  Shame really because unlike lots of the magazines I buy where I admire but never 'do' these did actually result in some creativity!

Anyway I made a notelet box well three in total, two teachers and a teaching assistant

which when opened looked like this, made from A4 card and scrapbook papers, I was sceptical that they would be really difficult or really flimsy and they weren't either!

I just used some basic letter paper inside stamped up and a few small 'cards' converted into notelets to match!

Then add the cellophane

Earlier in the week the breakfast club staff got 'altered' chocolate bars (I know only me) but they looked OK when they were done!

Now what on earth am I going to do for Christmas - added to which said 10 year old's teacher this next year is male.

ACADEMIC PLANNER

After a stressful morning at the cardiology clinic having an echo cardiogram I decided to have a bit of retail therapy around the local shopping centre. I happened into my favourite cheap bookstore for a thorough browse and came across some academic planners. Now there had been a great post on UK Scrappers recently for Teacher's Gifts including one for academic planners. I bought one a few weeks ago and dismantled it, it was on a spiral wire, however, the spiral was set at a different width to my bind it all wires so my plan of using a new wire went out of the window. I had to reuse the wire that I'd taken off and I was less than impressed with the finished article - hence the fact it never appeared on my blog LOL! However, I am a lot happier with this one - you won't believe what I did! See photos below!

This is how the book started out, it's an A5 planner costing £1.99 and had a leatherette type finish.

I quite literally cut the book out from the inside using a craft knife, be careful not to be over zealous with the knife, you don't want to be chopping into the pages.

As you can see, this left the back cover to play with in peace!

Now the book stretched out was touching the 12" mark, so I tore some paper and added it to either side of a sheet of 12 x 12 paper and stuck with DST and glue stick. This made the paper around the 14" mark so I knew it would go around the book with some overlap to the inside. I then stuck the paper to the outside of the book with double sided tape and glue sticks, folding it to the inside and sticking down on all four sides, to get the finished article below.

The outside was a lot prettier, as you can see, I tore the paper and inked the edges. I also went back over it with a bone folder to get rid of bubbles after I'd taken this photo!

Once this was complete I had to deal with reattaching the inside of the book. Basically the original book had had a sheet of paper twice the size of the book folded in half. The right hand side was stuck to the book's insides and then the left hand side was stuck to the inside of the hard cover. This was then replicated in the back of the book. I also replaced the rather cheap ribbon that had originally been in the book. The photo below shows the double the size paper attached to the inside of the book and ...

This now shows the left hand side attached to the inside cover.

This shows the back of the inside cover once it's reattached, I'm sure you'll agree a lot prettier than the original book!

I then put the letters PLANNER on the outside of the book, cut on my big shot, added some stickles and used glossy accents on the cupcakes. I think I'll make a matching notebook to go with it and that should hopefully make a great gift for a teaching assistant. As my little one attends not only school but also breakfast club and after school club on a couple of days I've lots of these to make - I can see me returning to said shop later this morning! I'm going to have a busy day of it!