What can you do with all those colored pencils that are on sale?

Make a cute vase, of course! I've seen a couple of these colored pencil vases on Pinterest. The one I read about was from Happy Clippings. I started with an empty soup can. Well, actually, I didn't have an empty one so I found one that was about to expire. Not too hard to do in my pantry since I don't cook very often. :)

I laid out 3 packages of colored pencils. I LOVE buying school supplies on sale at the end of the summer! I keep buying glue because it's so cheap and I don't even really use it in my class anymore. It's getting a little out of hand but school supplies are just one of those things that I love to buy. Anyway...first I matched all the colors from the 3 boxes. I had seen one vase online that was in no particular color order and I knew I would prefer mine in order.


Then I started putting them in order around the can using a rubberband. Some websites don't glue them to the can (or vase) so the teacher can use the pencils later. I'm just using this for decoration in my classroom so I glued them with E6000 glue. Just like with the post-it note frame last time, I could've used a glue gun but it's still at school.

Then I added a ribbon on top of the rubberband. On the Happy Clippings site, she had her daughter make a ribbon that looked like a ruler. It was very cute! I looked for a ruler ribbon already made but could only find a really thin one. I already had this red ribbon so it worked just fine!

Because this is going to be a year-round decoration for my classroom, I bought a fake set of flowers at Hobby Lobby on sale for about $3. But hey, I'm always open to real flowers...hint hint. :) This would make a super cute teacher appreciation gift with real flowers in it too.

This stem didn't really work the way it was, so I cut off each stem.

To me it seemed like there were too many leaves so I cut off a lot of those too. Looking back, if I had known I was going to cut off so many leaves, I probably could have left the stem in tact. Oh well, next time!

I used a piece of curly ribbon to tie the stems together so they wouldn't spread out too much in the can.



And voila.....a colorful vase to brighten up my classroom that only cost about $5 to make.

Post-It Note holder for my desk

I first saw this adorable post-it note holder on another blog, Red Heads Craft More Fun.

She used the 3.5x5 size acrylic picture frame. I used the 4x6 size, basically because when I was at Hobby Lobby I couldn't remember what size she used. But it ended up working out fine. Instead of standing the frame up, you lay it down. I cut a piece of zebra print scrapbook paper to go inside.

Then I attached some red ric trim to the top and bottom of the frame. Ideally I should have done this using a glue gun, but mine is at school. First I tried using mod podge. The top strip worked, but the bottom one didn't. Weird! Then I tried some all purpose craft glue. It didn't work either. Then I found some spray adhesive from when I made tile coasters several years ago, but it wouldn't spray. Argh! Then I remembered this die cut adhesive I had. I laid the ric rac on the adhesive. When you pick it up, it's sticky like a sticker on the bottom. Finally, this worked!

I applied a little clear nail polish to the edges of the ric rac so it wouldn't fray. Not sure if this will work but I figured it was worth a try.

Then I put the zebra paper in the frame and attached stickers to spell out my name. Unfortunately the stickers I had were white and didn't show up all that well. Here it is with my name and the blue post it notes stuck on top...

I added a strip of black paper inside so the white letters would pop. Here is the final product. I think this will look very cute sitting on my desk this year!

Welcome to my new blog!

Welcome to my new blog about my adventures in crafting. Lately I've been spending lots of time playing on Pinterest and all sorts of blogs. I find one blog I like, read a few posts on it, then link to another blog, read some posts on it, and so on. Before you know it, hours have passed by and much time has been wasted. But it sure is fun! I love finding cute crafts to make and decided that I should blog about what I like and what I'm making. I'm a teacher and will be going back to work next week, so this might be a slow process. Thanks for tagging along!