Some OTP fun with Teacher's gifts

I had several teachers to create thankyou gifts for this year, as my son has two classroom teachers, and has also participated in Learning Assistance for reading and Reading Recovery programmes. Here is a sample of what I created to thank them for their mammoth efforts in helping him achieve his best.

I made some mini Christmas fruit cakes in a Baba cake tin (they look like a mega muffin pan with tubes in the centre, or a baby ring tin) with the mixture that won't fit inside my smaller round cake tin. Nice and easy, they take just 50 minutes to cook, and the finished cakes sit nicely in a large muffin case. I wrapped them in cello and added a topper made from Confetti Cream cardstock, punched and embossed using the delightful Labels 1 set of Nestabilities. I have stamped them with a sneak preview of an upcoming set... And that's all I'm going to say about that, except that I think it is going to be on LOTS of wishlists!!!

Then I chose some of my most favourite patterned papers (other than the SU DSPs of course!) - Basic Grey Blush - Devotion. Kind of apt really, given the handful that is my firstborn child!! and used these to decorate a Heaven Hot Chocolate tin (sadly, this delectable treat has disappeared from supermarket shelves, sob!) You can't really see from this picture, but I used Baroque Motifs background stamp to stamp the lid, and added a chipboard monogram of the teacher's initial. I used the flower motif to stamp the scallop circle in the flower centre. I experimented a little here, using a Colorbox Queue chalk ink as the base (because it matched the dusty opaque pink I was wanting), then I used the Stampin' Write Marker "thumping" technique over the top of the pigment ink, with my Ruby Red marker. Nice!!
Thumping is a method of adding touches of colour by lightly dabbing over the top of a base colour with a second of third colour, to get a sort of mottled or marbled effect. I've used it with dye inks before, but not pigment ink as a base, so now I can't wait for more colours in the Stampin' Up! Craft inks so I can match away to my heart's content, and have the lovely opacity that pigment inks add!! I trimmed the tin with vanilla taffeta ribbon and added a rhinestone brad to the centre of the flower. Inside, the tin is full of erasers. Yes, pencil erasers! Covered in small pieces of Blush range papers to match the tin. From my time in the classroom doing reading groups, I knew that LOTS and LOTS of erasers are a very good thing! I also added a small stamp for the teacher to use for her marking.

Finally, I made a matching series of cards, this is one of them. It uses Ruby Red cardstock as a base, and the Scallop Border punch from the Summer Mini along the bottom edge. This is underlayed with a strip of Confetti Cream to show off the scallops. A strip of Blush Devotion is also matted with Confetti Cream. I added a tie of Vanilla Taffeta ribbon, and used the Square Scallop punch to punch a stamp from the "Say it with Scallops" set. I matted this with a slightly larger nesting square scallop punch by EK Success, who make our lovely SU punches for us.

off to do some vacuuming....