Personalized Pencil Case with Vinyl

My daughter needed a pencil case for school, so we found this one in her favorite color with the added bonus of it being shimmery and came with a fun tassle. But, the top was a little plain - or perhaps, as we decided, it was the perfect canvas for a bit of personalization.

Before I applied the vinyl, we decided to add a bit more color. It was a fun and easy activity to do together as we used the eraser side of a pencil to add dots of greens and blues for the perfect backdrop to the gold vinyl initials.

I used my die cut machine to cut her initials and a cat silhouette with gold shimmery vinyl. 

We love vinyl for all kinds of back-to-school personalizations - water bottles, lunch containers, folders and notebooks, bookbags. What will you personalize today?

I used: SRM Vinyl

Mini Calendar Teacher Gift

It's almost time! The summer is winding down and school supplies are stacking up. Today, I'm sharing a cute back to school calendar project for your favorite teachers. I started with a mini clipboard that I covered with school themed washi tape.

Then I grabbed all my school themed SRM stickers and the 2017 and 2018 calendar stickers. Using precut 3x4 journaling cards, I used the calendar stickers and lots of SRM stickers to create a fun card for each month. Each card is fun and unique.

For this project, I used lots of stickers from these SRM collections:

Mini Calendar Standard for 2017 and 2018 | Year of Memories 2018 | Express Yourself School | Live Life School | Say It With Stickers Teacher | FreeStyle School | 

Simple Brush Lettering and Lunch Box Notes

I love stashing little notes into my daughter's lunch bag. Sometimes it's just a quick little message scribbled on a scrap of paper, but I also like to pre-make cute notes to tuck in for her to discover and let her know I'm thinking about her and think she's amazing.

My SRM Faith and Planner stamps are giving me great inspiration for these notes. I used several stamps, brush markers (LePlumeII) and my ColorIn watercolor pencils to create a set for next week.

I've gotten lots of comments complementing my lettering on my Bible journaling pages. I'm no expert and I have to admit to having trouble achieving the look I want with just a brush marker. However - the dual tipped markers give me a great "cheater strategy" in getting the brush lettering look I like. Take a look at my simple brush lettering technique using Marvy Uchida LePlume II dual tipped markers in this video.

Now you can make your own little notes - for lunchboxes, the bathroom mirror, to send in the mail, or leave one for a coworker to find. Enjoy!

For this project I used:

Planner Stamps "Birthday Plans" | Planner Stamps "School Days Planner" | Faith Stamps "Trust in the Lord" | Faith Stamps "The Lord is my Light" | ColorIn Watercolor Pencils | LePen Dark Set | LePlumeII Dual Brush Markers

Back to School

It's back to school around here. I love the yearly supply shopping and getting back to a routine. I'm glad my daughter loves school and shares some of my enthusiasm for this time of year.


It's also a great time for crafting up some back to school goodies. This year I created an adorable banner that I used for our annual back to school photo shoot and now have it hanging in our dining room. Most of the die cuts are Cricut cuts that I just selected randomly from various cartridges. I used school themed paper to coordinate the different elements. To add a little interest at the top of each pennant I added a small doilie (from SRM).  I also grabbed a few clear sentiment stickers from my SRM stash to add to some of the banners.

Of course we needed a sign for my 2nd grader to hold during the photo shoot and on the first day of school. I used an piece of wood (found a great size in my garage) and added some SRM stickers and a die cut title. Simple and much faster than the banner! 2nd Grade here she comes!!!

I also like to give a small gift to our new teacher. This small red wire basket was in the dollar bin at Target as were some of the included goodies. I used some more SRM stickers and put them on cardstock and attached a magnet to the back so they would stick to the basket. A little twine wrapped around it and the gift was done. Teaching is a hard job (I taught middle schoolers for 13 years). We like to look for anything we can do to make their day a little more fun and a little easier.

You can find the SRM sticker products I used HERE:

Say it with Stickers "Teacher" | Freestyle "School" | Express Yourself "School" | Live Life "School"  | 6 inch doilies (red, black, green, white)

How to Have an OWLsome Year Teacher Gift

I can't believe it, but we are headed over to meet my daughter's Kindergarten teacher this evening.  To distract myself from the thoughts of her going to full time school next week, I've been crafting.  This cute owl is an SVG from Miss Kate's Cuttables that I downloaded as the Freebie of the Day earlier this week.  We are bringing Mr. Owl and the painted canning jar full of pencils to our new teacher.  It's going to be and OWLsome year!

School Layout

Once again I'm closing in on my "stay current within a year" scrapbooking goal and scrapping our back to school photos from last fall.  This layout highlights some of the back to school photo session pics from our girl a few days before she started 4-year old preschool.  (Pardon me as I wipe my tears at the thought of her going off to Kindergarten this year!!!)  Most of the papers are from a DCWV paper stack.  I incorporated several SRM stickers into this layout.  The large "Hello" sticker drove the title.  I highlighted that with dots and flower borders and a little yellow butterfly. My favorite is the line of "hello sunshine" white lettering laid across the bottom photos.  With her bright yellow dress she really is a little ray of sunshine.

This layout was inspired by this month's SRM Challenge.  I played along with both the color scheme and the theme.  You can check out more inspiring layouts on the SRM Challenge Blog. 

Apple Teacher Pin and Post It Note Gifts

My girl has started school.  Granted, it's only 3 year old preschool and it's only 2 mornings a week, but it is a big deal - for both of us.  Day one was great - no tears for either of us and while she was at school with her teachers, I was able to help out a friend.  And that felt good, too.

I wanted to get some great first day photos, but wasn't sure we would have enough time on the actual first day, so we did a little dress-rehearsal photo shoot the day prior and with a little help from photoshop, I was able to post this photo as soon as we got home from the big day.

I also realized that her starting school has opened up a whole new excuse, ahem, reason, for crafting.  Of course I'm talking about teacher gifts!  I had to create a whole new board on Pinterest to organize all the great ideas out there.  That's where I first saw cute ways to give a simple stack of post-it notes.  I made mine by covering plain cardboard with scrapbook paper and clipping a stack of post-it notes to it with a paper-covered binder clip.  So easy!  I also wanted to make something with an apple, so I went to my Cricut machine, found this cute apple on "Create A Critter" and cut it from felt.  The felt is self-adhesive and I sandwiched a pin between the two layers so Hannah's teachers have a cute felt apple pin to wear.  If anyone wants more specifics, let me know and I will try to create a quick tutorial.  Yay for school and more crafty reasons to make special handmade cute things!  Teehee!