Mom's Treat

Look at what my mother did! As the school year comes to a close (woohoo! only 4 more days), I want to give all of my students who have a summer birthday a little birthday treat. Well, that added up to over 30 students. And what with trying to finish grading some major projects, packing up my classroom, graduation gifts, and stress, stress, stress, I just didn't see how I was going to get them all done! That's where my mother comes in. She volunteered to make a few for me, but she ended up doing almost 30! And they are soooo cute!

The treat bags are filled with animal cookies. She used a variety of mediums to color her animal images including copics and watercolor. Some of the images are from stamp sets and some are from digital stamps. Didn't she do a fabulous job of coloring and pairing papers!!!! I wish you could see them all together in real life. Be sure to click on each of the pictures to see a larger image of each. The pictures only show some of them. I can't wait to give these to my lucky kiddos!

Forest Treats for the Kids

As the school year races to a close, I needed to get a lot of these little treat bags finished up. Several of my students have birthdays this month, but I'm also trying to get the summer birthdays their treats before the last day of school. I went into overdrive with my SU Forest Friends set. I wanted to see if I could design several of these using the same basic images and have half of them for the boys and the other half with a more feminine feel for the girls. The basic difference between the two sets is the paper I used. For the boys I used the darker, richer SU Always Artichoke CS, stamped the images on PTI Kraft CS, and pulled out some green prints from Basic Grey's Boxer set. For the girls I used the softer SU Mellow Moss CS, stamped the images on PTI Vintage Cream CS, and pulled out a lighter print from BG Boxer set.
Of course, the embellishments make a difference, too. Did you happen to notice the brown buttons in the top picture? Hey, I didn't have any brown buttons, but I did have some off white buttons, a brown copic marker, and my airbrush kit!! In a few seconds, I had brown buttons....like magic! Wonder what I'll work my "magic" on next! Stay tuned...

Forest Friends Birthday Treats

More birthday gifts for a couple of students. I wanted to use the same basic design and Pacific Point cardstock for each, but I was making one for a girl and one for a boy. I hope I was able to give one a masculine feel by distressing the paper and using the darker color combination. The little deer in this set is so cute, but junior high boys aren't crazy about "cute" (unless it's a girl). It's always such a challenge to go masculine. You have to hold back adding all the bling and flowers and you have to be so careful about ribbon. I colored some PTI vanilla twill ribbon with my copic to get a rust-colored ribbon.

My girlie treat bag has the pretty pinks and, of course, flowers to make it oh-so-sweet! Happy Birthday Angelica and Dillon!

I've been using these covered treat bags all year with my students. I got the idea from Julie Buhler. Check out her blog for the directions for this treat bag and a whole lotta fantastic projects and tutorials. She's totally amazing. And I'm sorry, but you'll probably be seeing more of these little treat bags. I've got over a 100 students. I really need to getting busy on the summer birthdays!

Project Recipe

Paper: SU Pacific Point CS, SU Really Rust, Pink Pirouette CS, Bella Blooms PP, Autumn Vine PP

Stamps: Forest Friends, On Your Birthday

Ribbon: PTI ribbon

Accessories: Fiskars Border Punches--Upper Crest, Scallop, Apron Lace, Imaginisce Ring Around the Rosies, Paper Studio brads, Word Window punch, Wide Oval punch

Bunny Treats

I give each of my junior high students a treat bag filled with animal crackers on their birthdays. I always try to keep with animal cracker theme by using an animal of some sort on the front. The little bunny here is from a TAC set called Spring Fling. I had wanted to include this in the Clean and Simple challenge this week at Splitcoast which called for using distressing. But this isn't a card and I did use several techniques on it, but I still think it comes across pretty clean. I distressed the edges of the patterned paper and sponged them. I also sponged the edges of the scallop circle. Anyway, happy birthday, Merideth!