End of the Year Teacher Gifts

Need an idea for a class teacher gift? I made two 8" x 8" albums for my son's first grade teacher and her aide. The room mothers went into the class & for each child, took a photo, had them press a thumbprint (pink ink for girls, blue for boys) onto two scrap pieces of cardstock & gave them two 6" x 6" piece of (cheap) cardstock on which to write a thank you message to each teacher.

Then, they passed everything on to me to assemble into the album. I ordered the simple black "SEI" albums & cheap cardstock off JoAnn's (all the supplies, including what I used of mine came to $20). I couldn't bear to give the kids my good SU! cardstock to write on...what can I say? I'm very protective of it :)

I loved these albums because the black matte covers immediately made me think of chalkboards & you can stamp on them. So, I used SU!'s retiring ABC Alphas, Images & wheel sets to create the cover. I stamped everything in Versamark, sprinkled white detail embossing powder & heat set to get the bright white chalk look. I colored in the images with Watercolor Crayons, covered in Versamark Marker and clear embossed to protect the images. (The apple die-cut was a thrift store find!) Tip: When using Alpha stamps, if you don't have punctuation stamps, just write them in with Versamarker and then emboss--I did that here and I think it worked out well.

On the inside, I just adhered the kid's messages in the middle of the page. Then I but 6" x 3/4" scraps on each side (more work but saves your supplies & money). In each corner I stamped a little image. I used the Wide Oval Punch to punch out each thumbprint and drew little arms & legs on them. I'd printed each kid's headshot cropped into a circle so I didn't have to use much ink. Then I could easily punch out each "head" with a 1 1/4" circle punch (blacked out in the photo above). Then I adhered each little "person" onto the page.

Hope they like them!

End of the Year Teacher Gifts