Quick and Easy Gift for Teachers

Not only a gift for teachers, but these make great gifts for your mail carriers, your hairdresser, your colorist, your paperboy, the UPS driver, your doorman, the farmer who mows your pasture, the sheriff deputy that tells you just shoot the dogs chasing the horses (I didn't shoot the dogs, btw)... you get the idea. These make great gifts. Inexpensive gifts!

A couple of these finished.





Now for the directions. This time of year most of the grocery stores have the huge candy bars on sale 10 bars for $10. That is 10 gifts!! Woohoo! A dollar a piece, not counting craft supplies. Walgreens and CVS carry these bigger candy bars as well.


Remove the wrapper and set the candy bar aside. You will need it later so no eating it.


Lay the wrapper on a piece of white card stock. Add another inch to the left of the wrapper or to the right if you are a lefty.


Yours should look like this, too.


Cut out it out. This is your template. Use it to trace all the rest you want to make. Forever.


If you are a Room Mom doing this project with your class or a Mom doing this with little kids I recommend using copy paper for these next steps. Room Moms and Moms with Martha tendencies you will want to use card stock.

Wrap the paper around the candy bar. Using copy paper just crease with your fingers.

Using card stock use the sharp edge of a ruler and a bone folder. Sorry, Martha, I left mine at home so I made the creases with my fingers. Much easier with a bone folder.


Those using card stock, remove candy bar and continue to use the ruler and bone folder to crease those edges. (Copy paper users can skip this step.)


Card stock should look like this. (using copy paper, the objective is to have an area to decorate)


If you are doing several of these and using card stock... unfold the one you just did and use it as a template to mark the fold lines on the rest of the paper for the number of gifts you want to make.

This step is a lot easier than wrapping the card stock around each candy bar. Draw light pencil marks, lay the ruler on the card stock, fold around ruler and crease.


Three different colors. Ready to decorate.

Almost


Now you get to unfold it. Don't worry it will crease again nicely after decorating.


Now the fun part.

You or the kids can decorate these with whatever you have on hand. They can draw Christmas or Holiday scenes using crayons or markers. Use Stickers, glue on fun foam shapes, stamp directly on surface, use paper punches to punch out shapes. You could even glue macaroni on these. Really! Just have fun.



When the decorating is completed. Wrap the copy paper or card stock around a candy bar... secure with tape (or you can use a glue stick with tape to hold it closed until glue dries then remove the tape)

Ta Da!! You can make these for any occasion as well. Valentine's Day, Boss's Day, My Friend Needs Chocolate Day... any day you want!






My daughter made theses gifts for ALL her High School teachers. Every Year! The Band teachers usually got Symphony Bars!

Yes, she was usually the only student giving the High School teachers presents at Christmas and at the end of the year.

Hey, they might have made me retire as a Room Mom when my daughter was in 7th grade (I had been a Room Mom since kindergarten) but they couldn't stop me from getting the teacher's gifts even when she was in High School. Once a Room Mom always a Room Mom.


I hope you enjoy making these quick and easy gifts! Send me a photo. I would love to see what you, your kiddos, or your class created. Email to enigmaartist at gmail dot com

How to Make a Reindeer Gift Bag

My little girl is now 18, almost 19, but we still had fun making a favorite craft last weekend.

We first made one when she was in Brownies, a division of Girl Scouts, for a gift exchange.



Notice the small hands, aka antlers...this is an important element as you will soon see.

Material List:



1. Bags
2. Brown Paper (I used a sheet of brown poster board this time)
3. Card Stock, cream or off white and brown
4. Wiggle Eyes
5. Red Pom Poms
6. Craft Glue
7. Black or Brown Marker (if you want to draw a mouth, eyebrows, eyelashes)
8. Scissors
9. Little Bells (optional)
10. Bows or Ribbon (optional) I really wanted plaid bows, but could only find red this time of year.

Ignore the black Fun Foam...I'm so use to using Fun Foam in Kid's Craft Projects I had it in photo then couldn't figure out where I had used it in the Reindeer Gift Bag.

First step. Have your kiddos trace their hands or you trace your little one's hands.



See those odd looking hands on the left? My attempt of recreating child size hands. Not such a good idea. So save a master copy of your kiddo's hands for future crafting. Or just use their "18 year old hand" like I did.

Step Two: Trace around hand pattern on brown poster board. Then cut them out. Tip: I cut poster board into 4 pieces. And I traced all right hands, you can flip them later.



Step Three: Make Ears



Brown Ear, upper right hand area of photo, draw a fat football or an oval with pointed ends on white card stock. Trace on to brown card stock. Cut them out.

Inside of ear (optional) trace around outside part of ear on to off white/cream card stock. Now draw a smaller version inside this... See lower left hand area of photo. Cut it out and that is your pattern for inside ear piece. Trace and cut out.

These are the pattern pieces. You can use this image to trace your patterns, Click to enlarge or make smaller.



Glue inner ear to outer ear.

Step Four: Attach bell to Bow or Ribbon. This time I used premade Bows. I just unwired a bit and threaded the gold fiber wrapped end through the hole in the top of bell.

Step Five: Lay out components on Bag for placement. Then use craft glue to adhere them.



Ta Da .... Completed Reindeer Gift Bag.



Or with the size of those antlers perhaps that is a Moose with a cold.

Optional Step: Use Black or Brown Marker to add eyebrows, eyelashes, and a mouth.
Tip: Use a pencil first. You will not be seeing the photo of the Reindeer I made with a Unibrow!

I hope you have fun making these gifts bags. If you do make them leave a link to your blog if you decide to post photos...no, blog? Send me a photo to enigmaartist at gmail dot com. I'll post your photo if you ok that. Either way I would love to see how your bags turn out.

(if any of these steps don't make sense let me know, it's 4:30 am I should be sleeping, so it's hard telling if what makes sense to me makes sense to you. Does that make sense?)

Update: I originally posted directions for bag, in the top picture, on my farm blog in 2004...the directions are a little bit different so if you would like to read those and compare...click here

If you liked this craft project... check out my tutorial for a Quick and Easy Gift project

New Cards

This one was made especially for my niece's birthday.

I made a total of three of this type of card while working yesterday. Great way to pass the time while waiting for a call. I just had to be careful not to get to much glue on my fingers. :)



I lost all of my sidebar info, links, etc... due to a accidental template change. I was using a different blog, one set up for trying out new templates before I use them. And poof, this site changed. That was odd. But now I have to put everything back. Bah.