Despite the fact that my kids are not yet in school, I have made my fair share of teacher appreciation gifts! As I have mentioned before, I have been a school secretary for a while - and because I love crafting, I always volunteer to make the end of year teacher gifts.
(You can see my past Teacher Appreciation gifts here on my tutorials page, just scroll down to the Teacher Appreciation Gifts section.)
This year, I decided to make pencil bouquets, after finding these great "flower pot" mugs...
Even without flower pot shaped mugs, this is a great gift, because of the easy, personalized elements.
I filled each mug with candy, so that the pencils would have something to hold them up. This year, I made 70 sets - which is why there are so many in this picture :)
We had a die-cut flower shape that allowed us to produce the hundreds of flowers we needed fast - but if you were doing this for 1 or 2 teachers, you could certainly cut flowers out by hand, or cut them on a silhouette or other cutting machine. We used cardstock, and had the school kids color and decorate the flower shapes. My favorite ones had words written on them, thanking their teachers.
With glue dots (found in the scrapbooking section of the craft store) we attached the flowers to the top of the pencils, one flower shape on each side so that it was pretty from any angle. We debated about sharpening the pencils, and decided not to - both because we had so many to do, and also because we didn't want the pencils piercing the candy bags.
A dozen pencils fit very nicely in the mug, and we finished it off with a tag, printed from the computer, with the teacher's name, tied on with a ribbon. They look very colorful and festive, and I am sure our teachers will love getting a useful mug, yummy candy, and teacher appropriate pencils for their classroom. Not to mention the sweet drawings from the children in their class :)
fabulous projects,tfs
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