Lisa Storms

teacher gifts for the holidays

I'm sure I'm not the only one who needs to be thrifty this holiday season, so I wanted to share some gift bags for teachers I made for Fiskars using inexpensive white lunch bags and paper scraps.

It's wonderful to not only get creative with your crafting tools, but to get the kids involved in making gifts. These can be filled with handmade cards and thank you notes, small treats, cocoa, gift cards, anything! 

And of course each bag is completed with a punny sentiment =). You can find the full photos and tutorials here.

And be sure to check out all of my previous teacher gift ideas here.

punny christmas cards

I am a big fan of puns ...  to the point of no shame, ha! So of course I had to come up some punny Christmas cards for Fiskars.

Getting creative with punches and ... straws and playing cards??

You can find full directions and photos here. =)

And speaking of Christmas, hop over to UCreate for my easy tutorial for making a peppermint ornament filled with Christmas photo memories. 

clay gift tags

During the craziness of the  holiday season, it can be quite therapeutic to stop and do a little crafting, especially when it's useful! These clay gift tags are very easy and fun to make.

They add a homemade feel to any gift and might be found hanging on the recipient's tree for years to come. Find my full tutorial over at Fiskars here.

The gift tags were inspired by the jewelry dishes I made a few years back, which would also be a fun Christmas gift to give to someone special! You can find my full Fiskars tutorial for the jewelry dishes here.

And if you are looking for more last minute handmade gift and packaging inspiration, here is an online class with a fun collection of projects. I have a super cute camera box in this class perfect for that gift we all love to give, photographs! Find out more info here.

I have so many holiday ideas I've been wanting to share on the blog, but it's truly been crazy around the Storms household. I hope to have time this week!

In the meantime, you can view some of my previous Christmas posts here. =)

holiday teacher gifts

I love finding creative (and cute) ways to say thank you to the teachers and staff at the kids' school.  From finding fun ways to dress up (literally) practical gifts...

... to adorable ways to house a gift ...

.... to making super simple, yummy treats!

Lots of teacher gift and card ideas in my new article over at Fiskars here.

creative gift wrap

You may know by now that I have an obsession with felt. 

So it shouldn't be a surprise that I came up with ways to incorporate it into gift wrap for my newest project over at Fiskars.

It easily and inexpensively adds a ton of texture ....

... and personality to your gifts.  You can view all wrappings, photos, and step-by-step directions here.

And speaking of gifts, I wanted to share a link to a free Holiday Gift Guide I enjoyed from Discover Paper blog full of cool paper gifts!

border punched ornaments

I was excited to get a chance to use the new interchangeable border punches from Fiskars.  

They function the same way as their regular border punches, except you can pop out different design cartridges so they store very compactly!

I used them to spice up the popular paper strip ornaments.  

You can view full photos and details in my article here at Fiskars.

holiday thank you cards

So apparently the kids and I had a little too much free time during winter break.  That's when you take those silly ideas that pop into your head and actually do them!

After our Christmas card photo, it only makes sense to follow up Santa mustaches with snowman noses.  Right?  I mean who else thinks this way?  I figure it's silly, but hopefully will give the recipient a little chuckle. =)

The kids wore a white shirt, scarf, and top hat from a magician set we've had forever that I taped hand-cut holly and berries to.  Then we cut out a carrot from orange foam, scratched in some random lines with a toothpick, and hot-glued to a thin dowel.  Instant cheese!

I printed them out a little smaller than our card fronts after adding simple digital text "thanks snow much" to the bottom.  I changed the text color depending on what I was overlapping, but otherwise just straight text.  Now I'm designing my thank yous, which will (possibly) be a little more "sophisticated" and will share soon...

santa mustache sticks

I couldn't come up with a Christmas photo I was happy with this year.  Just seemed to be the same old photos I've done before. It was very frustrating. 

Then one day Owen came downstairs dressed in Kaylen's Santa dress, a backwards vampire collar, latex gloves, a Santa hat, and his try at a paper mustache and beard taped to his face.  His exact quote was .... do I look like Santa or what?! 

So I cut out a more realistic mustache and beard for him that, you know, had a mustache that went *below* the nose.  (I love this kid.)  Which reminded me of the mustache sticks I made for his Mario party this summer.

A light bulb went off (or I guess it would be turned on?).  I combined the two and came up with Santa mustache sticks.  I love the personality props bring out =).

I doubt I'll be back before Christmas so ...  Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

rudolph cake pops

I've been wanting to try Bakerella's cake pops that I am seeing everywhere and thought adding some to teacher gifts would be a good excuse!  I did them kind of "upside-down" as I envisioned adding little tags and plopping them down individually onto desks (like in the front office) to stand up on their own.

I used red M&M's for the noses and little pearl sprinkles with food marker for eyes.  I have to admit these are kind of addictive to make ... and eat.  What a fun way to eat a bite of cake without a mess.

I wrapped them in lollipop bags and cinched close with a brown chenille stem.  I formed a kind of "heart" at each end and them flattened them and twisted to secure to form simple antlers.  I twisted one onto each of the gift bags for the teachers using the antlers without realizing this would make the bag fall right over.  So I just added another pop inside to balance it out.  Twice as yummy I guess! 

holiday lunches

This is the last week of school for us before winter break, so I've now made my last school lunch of 2010.  Had to go out in holiday style of course.  I had grand plans of all kinds of creative things, but with the reality of time, I went super simple.  And I'm always happiest when I do.

First up is a snowman themed lunch.  I cut their sandwiches into sealed circles by accident.  I couldn't find a circle cutter the right size so I grabbed a mug with a lip that curves out.  So when I cut with it, it automatically sealed the two pieces of bread together.  Happy accident.  I gave him raisin features glued on with peanut butter, and of course a carrot nose.  Another compartment is full of  more "noses" on top of grapes, and the last is a marshmallow snowman on a bed of pistachios.  The pistachios have no significance here, other than my kids really like them =).  My kids are obsessed with making these snowmen, and I'm sure they are a classic but here's what we do ... spear three marshmallows with a pretzel stick, break another pretzel in half for the arms, and draw on features with food markers.

The gingerbread lunch is one the kids have been asking for for quite a while, ever since I bought the cutter.  He is made from what I call the Lazy Mom Grilled Cheese.  I toast two pieces of bread, put a slice of cheese in between and microwave for 10 seconds to melt.  I used a gingerbread man cutter and added a few raisins.  Then I have hollies and berries for the fruit and veggie.  Grapes for the berries and sliced cucumbers cut around the edges with a small circle for points. 

By the way, since I am always cutting things up for their lunches, I keep all of the "scraps" leftover and save them to add to their afternoon snack.  Nothing goes to waste.

I hope to find time to post a little more holiday inspiration soon...