Teacher's Pencil Craft.

  Let me start this entry by saying that I was extremely thankful for my daughter's teacher this past school year. She was everything I'd hoped my little girl's first teacher would be: kind, caring, fun, and patient. At the first parent-teacher conference, she had so many wonderful things to say about my daughter. So, I figured I'd show my appreciation with a little gift. A crafted gift, of course!

  I found the idea for this project while searching through Pinterest.com for 'teacher's gifts.'

Here's a list of my supplies:

• Pink & Yellow Paint
• Black Marker
• several inches of Painter's Tape and an x-acto knife
• Block of Wood, about 12 inches of a piece of 2x4
• small piece of Sand Paper
• Miter Saw (or possibly another kind of saw)
• Around 40 inches of wire, 16-20 gauge & pliers
• Stickers for the Teacher's Name (optional)

  I started by marking the wood with two angled lines to for the tip of the pencil, and two small lines for notches around the 'eraser'. My husband used a miter saw to cut the wood. (Thank you, husband!)

After it was cut, I lightly sanded the whole piece of wood, getting rid of the sharp edges.

Wooden Pencil, after being cut & sanded.

  Next, I wrapped a piece of painter's tape around the wood toward the tip, and used an x-acto knife to cut a scalloped design all the way around into the tape, removing the tape on the side facing the 'eraser.' I was left with a piece of tape still around it that would create the look of a sharpened pencil.

After the yellow & pink paint.

  My daughter painted the yellow part, and then the pink part. She loves helping with crafts! Once the paint was dry, I colored the tip of the pencil with the black marker. 

Then, I wrapped a piece of wire around the notches four times, and pushed the end back behind the other wire. I took another piece of wire, about 8 inches long, bent it in half, and slid it under the wire already around the pencil. I curled both sides of the 8 inch piece around my marker, and stretched them out a little.

After adding the wire.

Almost complete.

  Finally, I added stickers to spell out her teacher's name on the pencil. If you have nice handwriting, you can write the name instead of using stickers.

My daughter was so excited to carry it into her 

classroom the next morning. She was beaming! 

  My husband, daughter, and I all contributed. We had a lot of fun making it together, and even made a second one for my husband's aunt!

Wooden Pencil craft!

Storybook Pumpkin Patch.

  This past fall, my daughter's school library asked for the students to create a Storybook Pumpkin Patch. The idea was to decorate a pumpkin (or pumpkins in our case) as your favorite storybook character and display it in the library during the week of Halloween. We were also asked not to cut or carve the pumpkins.

  So, my daughter picked out her favorite book and we attempted to recreate it- pumpkin style. :)

  The book she chose was Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy, her favorite among the Ladybug Girl books that we own. They are an adorable group of books by David Soman and Jacky Davis. We decided to decorate two pumpkins, one to represent Ladybug Girl and one to represent Bumblebee Boy.



Here's how we made them:

Supplies:

• Two baking pumpkins (they were cheaper and more manageble that the larger pumpkins)
• Red, yellow, and black acryllic paint
• small bowl for paint & paint brushes
• about 24 inches of metal wire
• 2 small rubber bands
• 1 yard of red tulle
• 12 small, black felt circles
• 2 small, red pom poms
• 2 12 inch pieces of red ribbon
• Hot glue gun

  Unfortunately, I didn't photograph my steps very well. Hopefully the pictures of the finished products should answer any questions.

Finished Bumblebee Boy pumpkin.

  We started with the Bumblebee boy. This pumpkin was so easy to decorate, and my daughter did the majority of the painting. She started by painting the entire pumpkin yellow, first the top and sides, and after it was dry, the bottom. Next, I painted six black lines around the outside, each about an inch apart. My daughter painted black in between my black lines, creating three 1 inch stripes around the pumpkin. And our Bumblebee Boy pumpkin was complete!

  For the Ladybug Girl inspired pumpkin, we started by painting it red. Again, my daughter did the painting. The decorations for this pumpkin were a little more tricky, though, I made the pumpkin a tutu, a set of wings, and a headband.

  The tutu is a tiny version of a 'no sew tutu' using the red tulle and red ribbon. There are lots of different tutorials on youtube explaining how to make one of these, such as "How to Make a Tutu by CraftyGuides" and "Make a No Sew Tutu by Yolanda Soto Lopez." After I tied the tutu around the pumpkin, I got just a little black paint on the tip of my paint brush and lightly added some of the paint to the outer edges of the tutu. I was super careful not to add to much and have big globs of paint dripping from the tutu.

Our Ladybug Girl pumpkin decorations.

  I made the frame of the wings with some metal wire, I'm not sure what gauge the wire was, but I could bend it with my hand. The shape was basically two semi-circle/ovals that met in the middle. Also, I painted the frame black. Then, I stretched a small piece of tulle over each wing frame and tied each side off with rubber bands. Finally, I added the little felt circles to the wings. I put a dot of glue on one circle, and when I put in on the tulle I pressed another circle to it on the other side of the tulle, creating one polka dot. Each wing needed 6 circles, but it ended up looking like each wing had 3 polka dots. I added the wings to the pumpkin with hot glue.

Finished Ladybug Girl pumpkin.

 
  The last thing I created was a headband. I made a roundish circle of wire that fit around the base of the stem fairly tight, and added two pieces of wire to it, both sticking up. Then I curved the two pieces of wire. We painted all of the metal black. Then, I wrapped the wire circle in red ribbon. The finishing touch was the gluing little pom poms on the ends of the two wires sticking up. Super cute!

I was very pleased with how the pumpkins turned out! It was a great craft for my daughter and I, and they looked good in the library's Storybook Pumpkin Patch.

Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy inspired pumpkins.