Teacher Gifts

Every once in a while I make something that gets me really excited. I mean really excited. This is usually because it is 1) inexpensive, 2) easy and 3) able to be mass produced. And, coincidentally, these are all very important criteria for handmade holiday gifts. Especially when I wait until ten days before Christmas. Low and behold...teacher gifts!

I cannot take any credit for this idea. While surfing the net for teacher gift ideas, I ran across several blog posts about personalizing soap and hand sanitizer dispensers using transparencies. Then, coincidentally, my fellow Waltzingmouse Stamps design team member, Bonnie, recently posted a project using this same technique. She included this link to where she found the idea. Now, having said all that, I LOVE this project! This is what I started out with, purchased at the dollar store:

These are big bottles...and for only $1.00! The soap, as you can see, is coconut scented. Bonus! I ended up using just the soap for this project because the labels on the hand sanitizer were so hard to remove. Next time I'm going to test the labels in the store before I buy! I used Goo Gone to get off any lingering residue.

The fun part was creating my design. I knew I wanted to personalize these with the teachers' names, but I wasn't sure what else to include. I needed something cute and clever, something "hand" related, if possible. Then I ran across a photo of a soap bottle with this perfect saying. I have no idea who created it, but thank you for the clever idea! I simply created my design in a Word document, then copied and pasted it several times on the same document for each teacher on my list:

I had these printed on transparency at my local Kinko's. The cost was about $2.00 per sheet, and I was able to get six labels on each sheet! It was probably slightly more expensive because I used color. But, really, that's only 33 cents per label! Can't beat that! To finish the whole thing off, I stamped a little tag and added ribbon and baker's twine:

I asked my daughter to sign the back of the tag, so the teacher would know who gave this to her. I guess she wanted to make sure her parents got some credit, too:

So...fair warning for all of my friends and family members this Christmas. You are all getting soap, because I just can't stop making these!





Stamps: 2010 Holiday Tags (PTI)
Paper: Simply Chartreuse, Pure Poppy, Stamper's Select White (PTI)
Ink: black Memento (Tsukineko)
Other: Copic markers, Simply Chartreuse satin ribbon (PTI), baker's twine (PTI), Crop-a-dile, classic and scalloped circle dies (Spellbinders), Label One dies (Spellbinders), adhesive rhinestone (KaiserCrafts), transparencies