Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Yet another teacher gift


The M & M teacher treats I made last month for a teacher appreciation gift were so cute that I wasn't sure what else I could could come up with  for the end of the year.  Then, inspiration struck!  I saw the most adorable tutorial for making a canvas tote bag look like notebook paper.  (You can see that one here).  It was adorable, but I had to do multiple bags and I could not really see myself sitting with a ruler and a sharpie trying to make all the lines straight.  Plus, the original tutorial was really too large because all I wanted to put in mine was a thank you card with a gift card tucked inside.

The extra small canvas tote bags that you can get at Walmart or a craft store in a bundle of 5 were the perfect size (not to mention, I needed to make five gifts!).  Given that I didn't want to draw all those lines, I decided the easiest way to do multiples was with an iron on transfer.  I made the finished image 5" x 5" and it turned out to be the perfect size. My son has CP, so handwriting is difficult and I knew he would not be able to sign his name on each bag.  The best solution was to have him write it once, then scan it and make it part of the iron-on transfer.  It worked beautifully!

The only slight problem I had was my iron didn't get the transfer hot enough at the top near the seam of the bag so it was peeling off just a little.  I fixed that by hot gluing a strip of ribbon over it and a little bow.  It solved the problem and gave the whole thing a little more flare.

Somewhere along the way I decided that a thank you note was not enough, and I ended up in the candy aisle trying to make a clever saying out of something that was on sale.  The best I could work in were Hershey's Hugs and Kisses and Extra gum: "Hugs and Kisses for a teacher who went the Extra mile this year."  I also decided later this afternoon that a cuter slogan probably would have been: "Hugs and Kisses for a teacher who gave a little Extra this year."  Here's what it looks like:


Below you'll find a link to PDFs of both the regular orientation and a mirror-image versions of both of the sayings.  Use the original if you'd rather just make a card or something like that.  If you want to do an iron-on, you need to use the mirror so it will read correctly when it is finished (follow the directions from the iron-on transfer paper you use).  I've got it 2-up because chances are you are using a full-sheet of paper and why waste the space?  Hope you like it!

Teacher Little Extra Paper Teacher Little Extra Paper Mirror Teacher Thank You Paper Teacher Thank You Paper Mirror Image