Teacher Appreciation Gifts

It's teacher appreciation week at Paxton's school, and BOY do I appreciate those teachers! :)

Each day has a theme, so I tried to comply as much as possible:

• Monday: "Cards of Love" - a super-cute free teacher appreciation printable from Balancing Home
• Tuesday: "Pamper the Teacher Day" - scented hand sanitizer from the $1 bins at Target
• Wednesday: "Bouquets of Love" - hand-made fabric flower pins
• Thursday: "Special Luncheon" (no gift necessary)
• Friday: "Sweet Treats" - whoops! I better make cookes for Friday!

The tutorial for making the fabric flower pins can be found here.  Though this time, instead of cutting flowers, I just cut circles - same result, easier cutting!

Next, I found this adorable free Teacher Appreciation printable last week and thought it would be perfect for the "cards of love" day. 

I downloaded it - which gave me this (8" x 10) print in gray and white.

Next, I opened the PDF file in Photoshop Elements and used the used the paint bucket tool to change the background to teal to match my pins & the hand sanitizer labels.

Then I used a "wallets" action from The Coffee Shop Blog to turn one image into 9 wallet-sized cards. 

Then I printed them, cut them out, rounded the corners and signed Paxton's name to the back.

Finally, I added punched star-shaped tags to the hand-sanitizer, and called it a gift.  Easy Peasy. 

Here's a look at last year's Teacher Appreciation Gift: Chapstick Pockets