Crafty Gift for a Teacher!

Nursing school has provided me with a variety of different clinical placements over the last 3 years. One of which was working in the StrongStart program to address the unique health needs of the community that used the program. If you are not familiar with what StrongStart is, it is a new program in some elementary schools for children age 0-5 and their caregivers to learn basic school skills and become accustom to going to school. It is addressing the issue that some children a not prepared for school and this is compounded by the fact that kindergarten is now a full day. If you have young children and are interested in the StrongStart program there is a lot of helpful information for you to decide if you would like to participate in the StrongStart program with your child here.

Well the point of this post was the cute teacher gift that I made for the program facilitator at the end of my time there.

I got the idea for this crafty creation from a tutorial on the blog Chic & Cheap Nursery called DIY: How to Make a Crayon Monogram. I love how something that represents school and childhood can be transformed into a super cute gift for a teacher.

Super Simple Crayon Monogram Tutorial:

Step 1: Collect supplies! I bought the white shadow box frame from Ikea for around $20 and I already had a fresh pack of crayons at my house. I am not sure why I had them, but I did. You will also need a pencil, a felt pen, hot glue gun, clear hot glue sticks, a knife, and a lighter! Yes a lighter!

Step 2:  Then I drew the outline of a C on a large white piece of paper and made sure that it fit the frame perfect. Creating a C is not the only image you can create. Be imaginative! You could make any letter of the alphabet or a heart or a star.

Step 3: Start at one end of the image and lay the first crayon on the image and make a mark with a pencil where you want cut the crayon. To make the cut I found it very effective to use a hot knife! This is where the lighter comes into action. Be very careful and heat up the knife with the flame so that the knife slides easily through the crayon. I put the crayon on a hard surface and then made the cut. I found that this method also makes the cut cleaner and the finished products looks more polished. Oh so pretty!

Step 4: Place the cut crayon on the image with a hot glue gun. I found that using a little glue is better then a lot because the hot glue may melt the crayon and you don’t want to see the glue squish out in your final product. Or at least I didn’t.

Step 5: continue cutting and placing the crayons around the letter in the color order that you like. I actually ran out of the exact colors that I wanted and improvised with colors that were close to what I wanted in the end. I couldn’t tell that they were different colors in the end. If you want to avoid this you might want to have 2 boxes of crayons to choose colors from.

Step 6: Write a super cute message. My inspiration tutorial had a typed message which seemed too complicated for me, so I opted for just the name of the teacher that this gift was intended for. I practiced in pencil first and then made it more permanent with the felt pen.

Step 7: Then just put the frame together and take pictures of your creation! SUPER CUTE!!

End result: Is an awesome original gift that the teacher can put on her classroom wall and remember you forever! hehe.

Have fun creating awesome things!!

XO JCL

P.S. In the last photo, the Crayon Monogram is sitting on a super cute Pouf that I made. It will be featured in a future post. Exciting! 🙂