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Saturday, June 25, 2011

End of the Year Teacher Gift- Chalkboard fun!

Hi lovelies!

Adelle just finished preschool! Crazzzzaay! I am extremely excited and sad for her to start kindergarten. We've had a great time at her Montessori school and of course we had to give her teacher an appreciation gift. After wandering through Michaels with Adelle for forever with absolutely no inspiration I spotted a little wooden board on a stand. Near it were the cutest tiny wooden ABC blocks I had ever seen. Immediately a chalkboard idea popped into my head! How much more fitting could you get for a teacher anyway?? After finding a few more school themed wood appliques I headed home and we created this!



Here is a shot of the back side.


So, here's how I did it :)

These are the supplies I started out with, minus the ribbon as I decided to add it later.


I happened to be spray painting for another project so I went ahead and sprayed on a light coat of primer to the chalkboard area just to help the chalkboard paint adhere better. So then I started off by taping the area off for the chalkboard, gave it a coat with a foam roller and painted the entire back. While that dried I rummaged through my acrylic paints and decided to paint the base yellow. This required several coats. I had originally painted the sides green but the sides of the board were very rough, so I ultimately decided to cover them with ribbon. (which turned out so much nicer, btw!)
After a few hours I painted on a second coat of chalkboard paint.

After everything was dry I played around with my little blocks, I wanted to spell out her teachers name. I had first planned to write it on the board in a white paint pen so that her name would always be on there, but I decided on this instead.

I hot glued on her name and then just arranged everything else and hot glued it all on. I made little bows as accents (glued them together so they don't untie) and sealed all of the ribbon edges with a lighter. To hold the chalk I just tied it to a long ribbon that was tied and glued to the leg. I glued the red ribbon with white stitching along the sides of the board and the rainbow on the base. I LOVE how it turned out. I was scared for a bit but the ribbon really finished everything off nicely!

Adelle wrote her name on the chalkboard and signed it with a little note on the bottom in sharpie.

I am pleased to say that her teacher loved it! I even spied her showing it off to the other teachers. :) I think it turned out SO cute and we might just have to do this every year! 

Of course Adelle does have several teachers, so we baked cookies and put them in cute little boxes with the recipe on them. I felt a little bad just giving the head teacher a gift when there are so many wonderful teachers there that Adelle loves. Here's a shot of Adelle with her head and asst teacher after their performance. 


So cute! We'll miss that school. Welp, I just wanted to share our little project with you! It's super easy and didn't take too long at all to make. And what a great and useful gift for the teacher to keep in the classroom with her for years to come! Happy crafting!


Linking up to:


The Lettered Cottage



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