Idea for teacher gifts

I am so excited about this find. I attended BABE 2011, ( Bay Area Bead Expo) in Oakland this past November. The Expo itself was quite overwelming.. Hundreds of bead booths, each more beautiful and unique than the next and of course expensive. I want to get into jewelry making, but having a difficult time carving out the time in my work-at-home mom life.

I did come across a booth for  http://www.craftfantastic.com/ . For $29.99, I purchased a starter kit that allowes you to make your own focal pendants.  I received a bottle of Fantastic Glaze and Glue, E6000 Multi-Purpose Adhesive and, 30 display glasses and about 30 criss-cross bales. I'm sure if I was more in the know, I could find all these supplies for less, but for my purposes, I'm excited.

You can take any image or paper and create beautiful pendants.  Instantly I thought about teacher gifts for Christmas. I like to remember all of the special teachers in my daughters life, school teacher, music teacher, babysitters, Taokwondo teachers, etc. but in order to do this I need to be cost effective. I'm old school, I believe in  thoughtful gifts for these special childhood mentors.

I searched throught my daughters valuable collection of school art and picked some of my favorite pictures. I scanned each picture, shrunk them down to about an inch, then printed them on plain white paper. Following the directions on the kit, I was about to create beautiful pendants. I'll purchase silver chains in bulk from http://www.firemountain.com/ , place each in a box with a typed description of the art work and give them as gifts. Yes, I do plan to keep on or two for me.

Here's the final product!!

Perfect turkey for a vegetarian

This craft was forwarded to me from a family friend. It appears the original source was http://www.eatingwithfoodallergies.com/ .

My mom takes credit for preparing the vegetables prior to the turkey creations.

1. the base is lettuces leaves

2. the body is cucumbers

3. the feathers are: yellow peppers, green peppers, red peppers and carrots

4. the feet are celery sticks, make two slices length wise , half way then soak in water over night

5. the face is the bottom of a green pepper, beak: a yellow and red pepper, eyes black beans attached  with a tooth pick.

My 4 year old, loved placing the vegetables on the turkey and was so delighted to see bags a freshly cut vegetables magically turn into a turkey

Repurposing crafts at Halloween

Prior to Halloween, my God daughter's mom was travinging so she spent a couple Friday nights sleeping. I like to keep the kids busy with fun crafts. Looking around the house, I found some old flower vases, the kind you get free with flower arrangements and some fun orange paint.  Using electrical tape, I asked the girls to cut out shapes ( circles, squares, triangles) , The girls placed the shapes on the vase to create jack-o-lantern faces. Then... the fun part. The girls painted the entire vase orange. Once the paint is fully dry, remove the electrical tape ( note, if any paint seeps through, simply scratch off the paint) Then, place a battery operated tea light in the vase and you have a cute, custom, reusable and repurposed jack-o-lantern