Crafty Overload

In all the spare time I had during the cake planning and decorating process, I needed to put together a class gift for Smunch's first grade teacher. If I was better about delegating this sort of stuff...and if I'd really understood the convergence of all the activities at the end of the year...I might have tried to give this job to someone else. But I'm a little clueless about this stuff. I started soliciting donations from other class parents early on in the process, but didn't have much idea what I was going to do other than buy a gift card from a garden store.

I didn't do it at the holidays, but I wanted to try and get the kids to make something for their teacher. It would be a lot more personal (and cheap) than the gift card. But I didn't want to do anything that was too big a deal. After all, what would she want with this item in 5 years or 10 years when she barely remembers who these kids are? Here's what I came up with:This is a plain ol' $5 terra cotta pot. I borrowed some acrylic paints from a neighbor, painted a grassy background and some lettering, then had each of the kids pick what kind of bug they wanted to create. They did the fingerprints. I did the details...antennas, legs, eyes, etc. and wrote the name of each kid next to their creation.It took me showing up during lunch two days in a row to get most of the kids. The last one was conveniently a neighbor who could drop by for a minute. I sprayed the whole thing with a clear acrylic glaze and then went shopping for plants to put in it.While I was doing fingerprinting, I also had all the kids sign a card and make a few ink print bugs for decorations. Too bad I didn't take a picture of the inside of the card. It was really priceless!*Phew*! It was a cute little project, but more work than I was really up for with an impending school-wide event to coordinate.

Although I had some trouble finding enough volunteers to help out in the classroom during the year, the class parents are monetarily generous. I was able to get that gardening certificate, a gift card for a nice Italian dinner, a manicure/pedicure card, and a gift card for Borders. Then, of course, it was up to me to find some kind of ridiculous crafty way to present these cards. Why I have a problem with handing someone a gift card or even a pile of gift cards, I'm not sure. I decided it needed to be a folding card with pockets. And this is what I came up with...It was kinda cute and garden-y. I stitched the pages together with yarn and then designed the whole thing to be a brochure of suggestions for summer activities. Cute. Maybe too cute.I got all these things together in barely enough time to be presented at the 1st grade picnic on Monday. Yeah. That Monday after the Spring Celebration on Friday. Ugh. The picnic was great, but that'll save for another post...