Teacher appreciation cards – with a fun twist for Music, PE and Library teachers’ cards
Last week was teacher appreciation week at my princesses’ school so we made some teacher appreciation cards. My older one wanted to give cards to her class teacher and her principal. My younger one wanted to give cards to her class teacher, her principal, music teacher, sports teacher, computer teacher and library teacher. Ya, she hates to have anyone left out for any gifts, cards and things like that. My girl. 100% my girl. :-)
For class teachers, my girls did their own cards and we also put in a little gift certificate. Both these ladies are exceptionally good with what they do and we have a whole lot of respect for them. I wish I had taken pictures of these, but my girls were too excited and glued the envelopes before I got a chance to do so. :-(
For their principal and computer teacher I made similar cards – using apple, “Best Teacher” mug, pencils and other traditional teacher images. I used two stamp sets – Teacher’s pet stamp set from Clearly Besotted (it’s an older set) and Teacher Talk stamp set by LilInker Designs. I wish I had some stamp set with computers / laptop etc, but right now I don’t, so I went with traditional teacher images.
For the PE (sports) teacher, I made a card full of stars using the Lots of Stars stamp set by Simon Says Stamp. I used their school colors – dark green and yellow – to make the stars and a little bit of black for added interest.
For music teacher, I made a card using the music 2 my ears stamp set by Simon Says Stamp. This is an older set and I am no longer able to find it in SSS online store.
For making the library teacher’s card, I used the Book worm stamp set by Clearly Besotted. Again, this is an older set but has great images with books. Just for a fun twist, I adhered the panel using scor tape, anchoring it to the lower right corner and foam mounted one of the book images over another.
I don’t have any ink that matches the same shade of doll pink card base. So I stamped one of the outline book images with black ink and colored the inside part of the book’s cover with my Zig watercolor marker. I also used the same marker on the paper clip stamp to add ink to the stamp itself instead of using an ink pad. That way I was able to continue the same color in another smaller, non-dominant image too. These markers have a brush tip and I did not notice any damage to them at all. Another way to stretch crafting supplies.
I won the Book Work stamp set and the Teacher’s Pet – as part of a giveaway on Debby’s blog last winter. I highly recommend visiting her space and checking out her creations. Drool-worthy!!
As I was creating lot of different cards, albeit with the same theme, I decided to keep all of them fairly simple. I did not use any major technique for any of these cards, except may be a very little bit of masking here and there. All these cards were either one layer or almost one layer – where the actual panel was a single layer that was die cut with stitched rectangle dies and then it was foam mounted on a colored card base. I also kept the embellishments to minimum – just a few sequins, washi tape and on one of the cards a couple stickers from my stash.
To still keep them interesting I added my images in clusters and followed some design principles like – Keep one main / focal image (like the notepad paper image) and repeat some smaller ones, (like the paper clips) around it. – Keep repeating images in odd numbers and mostly a couple different colors – Play with contrasting colors – red and green, for instance, which are opposite on a color wheel. – Add a bit of a dimension and interest with some sequins / washi tape.
I was able to do these in little over one evening – may be 3-4 hours tops for all of them. One happy craftsy mommy :-)
Supplies list
For your convenience, I am sharing links to the supplies I’ve used for these cards – click on the picture or link to go directly to the product. Wherever available, I have used affiliate links, which means when you make a purchase, I receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) which I use to run this blog. I truly appreciate your support!
Simon Says Clear Stamps LOTS OF STARS sss101404 Pure Sunshine
Simon Says Stamp STITCHED RECTANGLES Wafer Dies sssd111455 In Stitches
Zig CLEAN COLOR 12 set Real Brush