Angry Birds Bulletin Board

It's back to school time:)  My kids went back to school and so did I.  I got a full time teaching job.  I am the At-Risk teacher at Dixie Middle School.  It's hard to describe exactly what I do, but I teach the kids who struggle with school for various reasons.  I have basically a self-contained class and I teach Science, Math, Geography, Language Arts, PE and Art.  The beginning of the school year is super boring, because the kids usually have to get in some sort of trouble before they get put in my class.  I mentioned that I was bored, so the librarian gave me the job of creating a new bulletin board.... one of my favorite jobs!

I wanted to do a bulletin board that teenagers could relate to... what better than Angry Birds?  I found this idea on Pinterest.  There is no correct link to it (why don't people know how to properly Pin in Pinterest?), but it got my mind whirling.  I found a screen shot that I could use as my basic idea.  I had my aide help me and we got to work.  The first thing we did was take pictures of the spines of books that we had in the library.  Then my aide hand drew and cut out the tree shadows.  We used my trusty Cricut to cut out the lettering.  And we just used an image search in google to find the front covers of the books.  (they were kind of an after thought because we didn't have enough spines to fill in the space).

My biggest negative comments have been from a cute special ed student... he said that I can't have two crowns, I need golden eggs and I should have a sling shot.... since I've never actually played the game, I missed a few details.  It turned out cute and it's colorful and fun that's all that matters.

(I also had to put a picture of a book that my friend, Bree Despain, wrote.  There are actually 3 in her series... The Dark Divine.  You should check them out.  They are fantastic!)

Teacher Appreciation Week

It's teacher appreciation this week!  I find it to be somewhat ironic that I am a teacher.... yet I am doing all of these fun things for my kids teachers... maybe I appreciate what they do so much because I truly know what they do!

Here's the thing about Pinterest.  Sometimes, I just repin something without re-visiting the original pin site.    So, I bought my cups, made my cute little signs for the top, bought my drink packets, ya know... the usual.  Well, just now, when I was typing up this post I thought I would visit the site so I could give the original pinner the credit she deserves... and I found that it also has a free printable!!!  That would have saved me some time... so, always visit the site with the original pin!  Thank you  Lisa Storms for the cute free printable and idea.

I made these for the teachers of my boys in Preschool and Kindergarten.

 I have an aide that works with me at school so I also made one for her.

Teacher Appreciation... take 2

I volunteered to decorate a door for teacher appreciation.  The door I was assigned was my son's 2nd grade teacher.  I happen to know his teacher a little better and I know her daughter.  So, I asked her daughter what she liked and she told me Home Depot... and working on projects.  I love Home Depot too, so I thought it would be fun to go with the whole tool, building theme.

I found clipart online and used my best artistic talent to make a paper tool box.  Then I enlarged the various clipart and cut and traced the clipart on patterned paper to make the tools.  For the letters I used my trusty cricut.

To go with the tool theme, I spray painted an old tool box I had bought at a yard sale.   I printed off paper tools from the internet and took them into the school to have the kids color them and write messages.  I had parents donate money to give her a gift card to Home Depot.  Then, I stuck some plants in there for filler.  In the back is her favorite candy bar... a symphony with toffee and almonds!

I truly appreciate all of my kids' teachers and all of the work and effort they put into teaching my children!!!

Batman Birthday Party

My baby is turning 3 today... I have mixed feelings. He is such a big boy... yet, he's still my baby. He LOVES Batman. So, we decided to do a Batman birthday party. Being the cheap person that I am (there's no way I'm paying $4 for a package of batman plates from the party store) and the fact that I love a craft project, I decided to make a lot of his party supplies.

I purchased the Batman Cricut cartridge from Ebay. Great purchase... only $14. With that, I started on the banner first. I also made a really cute invitation, but forgot to take a picture. I actually did splurge and buy helium balloons.
I made these cute treat boxes and water bottle labels with the Cricut as well. His birthday is Sunday, but we had the party on Saturday. So, I'm saving the cake for his birthday, but I thought it would be fun to make cookies for his party. I had an oval cookie cutter for the outside of the Bat symbol. Luckily, Michael's had started putting out their Halloween stuff, so I found a mini set of Halloween cookie cutters... bat included. I made chocolate fondant and dyed it black and cut out the bats.
And I refused to pay $20 for the Batman piñata at the party store (it's bad enough having to buy the candy). We just simply paper machéd a balloon with newspaper and spray painted it yellow. I cut the cute bat shield out on the Cricut and taped some curling ribbon to the back, then hot glued the shield to the balloon.
For the activities, we had the kids decorate their own masks with glitter glue and jewels.
I was quite surprised that even the boys really got into it.
We did face painting (not really a batman thing, but my kids just love face painting).
Luckily, my party store did have a few batman games on clearance. We bought a pin the bat symbol on batman and a joker target shooting game. (I forgot to take pics). We also made cotton candy... totally unbatman, but kids love that too.

And I couldn't have a batman party without Batman capes. Luckily, my mom has an awesome fabric stash, so it was free to make these. I kind of used this tutorial from Puking Pastilles. She has a pattern for sale as well. I just used the idea and made my own pattern out of newspaper. I cut the bottom out like a bat shape. Then I just serged the edges of the capes. I sewed velcro on the tabs to close them in the front. I downloaded a free Batman font off the internet and printed out the monograms. Then I appliquéd them onto the capes. My "T" already had a Batman cape, of course, so I made him a Robin cape.
And last, but not least, after the party was all over, I stayed up late to make my fondant covered birthday cake... for his Sunday family party. It looks so simple, but really was a bit of a pain.
Happy Birthday Big T!!!

Okay, what's my next project... bring it on:)

A few crafts for my classroom

I am a teacher by profession. I taught highschool French and Chemistry for 3 years and Jr. High Science fo 5 years. I took a break from teaching to have kids. When we moved to St. George, I decided to try to find a teaching job. I was too late to find a job teaching science, but I found an opening as a study skills teacher.... which I love! My students told me that my classroom was boring... so I thought I'd take care of that!!!
I made this adorable bunting to hang across my boring chalkboard...
It's always top priority to count down until summer break...
... and no classroom can be complete without a calendar. The dates are laminated and attached with velcro so that I can use different dates for each month. ( I have loved having a laminating machine at my disposal)

I used my Cricut a little, the old-style Ellison die cut machine at the school, and a pair of scissors to create all of these crafts! It was also a fun way to use some of my papers that I didn't think I would use on my scrapbook pages.

-Anisa

Seasonal Banner

I'm really into seasonal stuff... I don't know why. I think it's because I get bored with the same decorations all the time... However, I'm realizing that all of my seasonal decor takes up a lot of storage space... and it's a lot of work to change the decor every month... oh well, I still love it!!!

So, our enrichment made this countdown calendar to Christmas. I thought it was an adorable idea, but the countdown was only for 12 days and I do a countdown for all 25 days of Christmas. So I decided to use mine as a seasonal banner. I had made a few seasonal banners before. But I didn't make one for every month. Now, this cute banner is hung up all year and I will just make new cards to go into each pocket.
(I ran out of time to embellish my Thanksgiving banner)
Here is a close-up of the banner. You can see that what I did was sew together two pieces of plastic .... the kind you use as a table cloth... I have no idea what it's called but you can buy it at Joann. I used a zig zag stitch to sew around 3 sides. The back piece of plastic is about a 1/2 inch taller than the front piece. Mine is about 4" square, but you could make it any size. Then I just hole-punched the top corners and tied them all together with ribbons... I used browns and creams to keep it as neutral as possible.
I think it would be really fun to make one that says "Celebrate" for birthdays. It's super easy to just take the cards out and switch them.
And the nice thing is that all you have to store is a small stack of papers for each month!
Let me know if you have any questions on how to make this banner.

-Anisa

Trinket Bag

In my blog surfing, I noticed that Made and Made by Rae were doing "Celebrate the Boy" for the month of February. Since I have 3 boys of my own, I've been checking out their blog all month. Both of the blogs had different posts about bags for boys. On Made, Dana has a super cute Hobo Sack. Love it, love it... totally cute!!! Then, over on Made by Rae, there was a guest post by Amazing Mae. She had these darling Trinket Keepers.

I have a little boy who I would say is a bit OCD. He decides that he likes a toy and will play with it non stop for days (until he's bored.) He's great about organizing things and lining things up and he loves to put things in groups in baggies. So, to save me some money on Ziploc bags, I thought I would make him is own drawstring bag. I liked the look of the trinket keeps on Amazing Mae, but I liked the idea of a bit bigger of a bag.

Right now his obsession is Trios. But that changes. So I didn't want his bag labeled for his toys because I'd be making a new bag every other day. So, my husband and I call our kids by the initial. I thought it would be cute to have is bag just say "Big J." Then he would use it for whatever his favorite toy is for the week.

So this is what I came up with:) I used my Cricut to cut the letter J out. I appliqued the J on the bag. Then I used my cricut to cut a stencil out of freezer paper. I stenciled acrylic paint over the bag and J and there it is. I then sewed it into a simple drawstring bag with a grosgrain ribbon tie.

He loves it and he takes his treasures everywhere with him now.
-anisa

Spring is in the air!!!!

Do you remember these cute banners I bought a couple of weeks ago from Peachy Cheap?

Well, I just had to show you what I did with them!!!  I love Kathyrn's tutorial on Nanny Goat.  

But since I had already bought my chipboard, I had to do something a little different.  I also made a summer banner with the other banner I bought from Peachy Cheap and I plan on making other banners with chipboard I'm going to cut with my Cricut.

-Anisa