Perfect Teacher’s Gift

Personalized Teacher’s Gifts

The end of the school year is right around the corner and it’s now time to start thinking about gifts for your kid’s teachers.  Each and every year I am completely stumped and at a loss when it comes down to crunch time and I can think of not one gift that really shows my deep appreciation for someone devoting so much time and love to my child.  I know that teachers work incredibly hard and I am in awe of their caring and patience, not to mention the dedication to their job.  While I am sure that all of the Starbucks and Target gift cards are beyond welcomed by teachers, I wanted to see if I could find something a bit more personal this year.  And while I almost feel slightly bad for giving a homemade space taker upper, I think that the multi-purpose adorableness of this pencil will more than make up for it.  It can be used as a nameplate on a desk, a wall hanging, door hanging, and the back is even painted with chalkboard paint, so it could serve that purpose as well!

Supplies

1 x 4 pine board

acrylic paint

chalkboard paint

paintbrushes

hot glue

burlap or ribbon of choice

stain

vinyl

miter saw

After cutting a 20″ piece of my 1×4 I pulled out my miter saw and started playing around with an angle that looked to be accurate for a sharpened pencil.  I ended up using a 22.5* angle.  To make the cut, hold one end of your board to the back of the saw (so the 3.5″ end should be touching the back).  Please be careful while making this cut as it is a little more challenging to keep your board immobile.  Once you have made one angled cut, flip your board over and do the other side.  You will leave the other end of the board uncut.

I actually ended up talking myself into buying a new saw when I started this project.  We had somehow managed to break off the knob on our old miter saw and it was unable to cut angles because of that.  Here is a picture of what my Saturday looked like:

Now comes the fun part…staining and painting!  I am really pleased with the colors that I chose, so I’ll share them at the bottom of the post if you are interested..  I dry brushed the stain on, just wanting a bit of color but not full on opacity.  Once the stain was dry I taped off an area for my eraser and painted three very light coats of yellow, keeping one end jagged to look as though the pencil had recently been sharpened.  Next I painted the eraser and the pencil point and after all of the was dry I finally painted the metal portion near the eraser.  It took very little actual work time, just a bit for all of the paint to dry.

After it was all painted I added my son’s teacher’s name to it.  If you follow along with me on Instagram you may have seen my horrible craft fail when I tried to paint the letters and they all bled so badly that I had to sand down the yellow and start over.  I ended up just using vinyl letters, but you could use a paint pen, Sharpie or hand paint.  After I had the name just right I flipped the pencil over and painted a quick couple of coats of chalkboard paint onto the backside.

Because I have a thing for bows and the dimension that they add to a flat project, I dug through my stash and found some burlap ribbon to tie a pretty bow with.  I attached the bow with hot glue.

I had a very hard time deciding if I should leave this pencil as a name plate or if it should be hanging.  I hadn’t as of the time that I took these photos, but I added two small screw bolts to the top and threaded some twine through, tying a bow on top.  Now the teachers have a bit more option and flexibility.

I am so in love with the sweetness of this pencil and can’t wait for my kids to give them to their teachers on the last day of school.  Because I love a good pun I will more than likely attach a card saying something super cheesy like “thanks for making me sharp!”  And because my daughter’s teacher is probably reading this right now: Abbie, pretend you didn’t see this and act totally surprised on Friday!  🙂  I made three pencils for my kid’s teachers for less than $5 total, including my board and a couple paints.  I had a couple items on hand, but even if you needed to buy it all it should still come in around $15.  Not bad for personalized gifts!

My paint colors

Minwax Red Oak stain

Craftsmart Dark Yellow

Craftsmart Coral

Craftsmart Graphite

Craftsmart Gray