Teacher gifts

It's that time again when all moms scramble (at least this mom scrambles) around trying to find the perfect teacher gifts getting ready for the onslaught of children home for summer.  This year I decided to actually use some of the craft items I have purchased from Pick Your Plum.  (I buy everything PYP offers.  Seriously.  They sent me a gift at Christmas last year for being one of their best customers. My husband was not proud.)

So I broke out the Silhouette.  Now I am not one of the crafty paper people who can make seriously cute things out of a piece of paper and some scissors.  I am more a fabric kinda girl.  Case in point - I have owned a Silhouette for over a year but have not done much with it because it scares me.  All the whirring and cutting just makes me nervous.  And I have messed up some perfectly nice vinyl trying to use the thing.  But I really like the idea of what it can do so I decided to give it another try by making some teacher magnet boards.

These are made from a pre-cut wooden base with a piece of sheet metal that fits in the base.  I started by painting the base red.

  The first coat turned out to be a little too red so I mixed it with some brown, applied a second coat, and let it dry.

Next I printed the teachers' names on adhesive vinyl with my Silhouette (fingers crossed the whole time), then weeded out the negative space.  I applied the vinyl to the painted wood using transfer tape and a scraper.  This is where I normally screw up the vinyl but lo and behold, it worked!!

Hooray!  I applied some Cosmo Cricket scrapbook paper (another fabulous purchase from PYP)  to the sheet metal using Mod Podge and had the kids write a personal note to the teacher.  Voila!  teacher gifts!

The magnets could hold pictures, notes, recipes, anything! I hope the teachers like them!

Robyn