art and year end

We are approaching the end of the school year again, and -- again -- I'm trying to think of a small, homemade gift for my children's teachers that isn't useless. Oh, and doesn't suck.

A couple of months ago I tripped over the idea somewhere of making your own scratch pads. Stuck that idea in the back of my head. (and probably on Evernote too) More recently I was looking for a non cutesy pen decoration idea. There are lots of cutesy ones, but my gift recipients are Grade 5 and Grade 7 teachers (and one's a male) so feathers and flowers won't cut it. I remembered seeing polymer clay decorated pens on one of the kids' art shows years ago and so thought I'd search on youtube to see if anyone has something on there.

Two days later when I crawled out of youtube... I had a plan. Of sorts. So I hit the local Staples to get some cheapy pens, swung over to Michaels to augment our polymer clay stash and introduced the idea last weekend to My Two. As a visual aid I topped it off with a viewing of this very cool video which totally got my son hooked.

They spent all day Sunday creating. ALL DAY !! I kid you not. As a matter of fact, even a week later they're still rolling out polymer clay and asking me to turn on the oven.

Next up, scratch pads. Apparently fabric glue or Gorilla glue will work. I'll letcha know how it goes. (I'm gonna try it this way.)