Thinking of Inking

I thought I’d share something different than cards in today’s post.  My younger son helped me decorate some tins for end of the year gifts for his teachers and classroom aides.  He chose the style and size of tin and the designer paper used for each recipient, and I covered the tins.

First, this is the tin given to his homeroom teacher, who taught him Math, Reading, Word Study, and Social Studies.  It’s just a “normal” Provo Craft rectangular tin, covered with papers from Stampin’ Up’s retired Porcelain Prints designer series paper.  I used SU’s Blue Bayou ribbon and some Prima flowers to embellish it, and added some tiny crystals to the centers of the Primas.  Tucking the ends of the ribbon inside the silver hardware on the front was more of a faff than I’d anticipated it to be and the end result was a little messy looking, but I was crunched for time so it had to do.

My son gave the next two tins to his Science and Language Arts teachers.  Both tins are approximately 8″ x 6″ x 3″.

Once again, my son chose retired Stampin’ Up designer papers - Bali Breeze for the tin on the left, Petals & Paisleys for the tin on the right.  The shape of these made them super easy to cover.  I used a corner rounder on the pieces for the lids.  The hard part (because there’s always a difficult part, isn’t there?) was that the papers were 12″ long, and the tins were about 28″ around, so I had to do some additional piecing on the sides. 

These two tins were for two classroom aides.  These measured about 5″ x 3″ x 1″ and ended up really cute, if I say so myself.  :)  The one on the left was covered with paper from Basic Grey’s Oh Baby! Boy collection, and the one on the right shows off two designs from Stampin’ Up’s Tea Party designer papers.  My mini corner rounder was the perfect size to finish off the papers on the tops of these tins.

So, there they are… five tins for five teachers.  My son wrote a little note to thank each teacher, and I adhered the notes to the bottoms of the tins.  I don’t know if they’ll see this post, but I hope they know I appreciate all they did to make this a really good school year. 

I haven’t done much creating the last few days.  Saturday my husband was sweet enough to let me “take the afternoon off” and go to A.C. Moore, one of the chain craft stores.  That may not sound like much at first, so let me explain… the closest A.C. Moore is about 85 miles away, or about a 90 to 100 minute drive.  Google Maps gave me one set of directions and Mapquest gave a different route.  So I decided to take the Google route there, and the Mapquest route home.  The Google route was more scenic, but the Mapquest route seemed faster. 

I’m lucky to live in a quite picturesque part of my state, in between two mountain ranges.  I had to travel over one mountain range to get to the store and home again.  The route there took me over the mountain on a two-lane state route which was really twisty and curvy, but well worth the trip if you love mountain scenery like I do.  Part of the road followed the James River, and I was able to stop and take the following photo.  I apologize if the quality isn’t very good but the only camera I had with me was the one installed on my cell phone.

Unfortunately, the picture doesn’t do justice in showing just how blue the sky was, or how yellow the wildflowers in the foreground are.  But it was a beautiful view and a gorgeous day, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to capture it.

 Perhaps you’ve noticed those little rectangular “Box Tops for Education” coupons on some of the products you buy.  They’re on many things, such as General Mills cereals, Betty Crocker frostings and brownie mixes, Pillsbury refrigerated cookie and bread dough, Kleenex tissues, Ziploc bags, even Huggies diapers! 

Our local elementary school collects them, and I’m in charge of getting them ready to send to General Mills.  We receive 10 cents for each one redeemed, and General Mills sends us a check for the amount we earn.

I’m very proud to say our little-ish school of just under 400 students has earned over $1000.00 for each of the last three school years.  I’ve even more proud to report that last year we earned more than any other participating school in our county.  (The year before I became the Box Tops coordinator, we earned just $550.00.) 

This year, we’re on track to earn $1500.00.  Lately I’ve been working on counting the Box Tops we’ve received this month, because the Box Tops school year ends February 28.  So I need to mail them off no later than Saturday! 

And there you have it… that’s why I’ve been only thinking of inking the last several days.

Yes, that’s the name of one of the really cool Basic Grey paper collections that I like a whole lot.  But it’s also what I’ve been doing since my friend Joyclynn at paper… scissors… ROCK! nominated me for the Kreativ Blogger award.  Thank you, J!  I’m very flattered.

The “official rules” of the award are:

1. put the logo on your blog (if you choose)
2. put a link to the person that sent you the award
3. nominate 5 blogs
4. put links to their blogs
5. leave messages for your nominees

I’ll be honest.  I know some of my friends who have been blogging for a while have already received some blogger awards, but I’m not sure whether or not it was this one.  So, if you’re listed in my blogroll, please consider yourself one of my nominees.  I love all of you and your work!

I do want to give special attention to two of my blogroll peeps.  They both started blogging about the same time I did.  Nadine at Stampin’ in a Tropical Paradise does a fabulous job of coloring images, whether she’s using her Prismacolor pencils with odorless mineral spirits or her Copic markers.  Lois at My Stampin’ Place is just an all-around terrific crafter and I wish I had her talent for tying bows.  I am lucky enough to have received cards from both of these women, so I can base my opinions of their actual work and not just photographs.  They both are awesome!

Be sure to check out Joyclynn’s blog, too.  She has some really cute cards on there!