Teacher Appreciation Week Gift Tags

It's Teacher Appreciation Week! We are reaching the end of the school year and it's time to say a special thanks to our teachers for all their hard work, patience, and dedication!

One of the mothers of my daughter's class had a great idea to give the teachers a gift every day this week! We divided up the gift purchasing, card/tag making, and delivering among the mothers. I volunteered to make the gift tags for two gifts: coffee and soap.

I love the puns and cute phrases that people have come up with to celebrate all the work our teachers do for our kids. All of our teacher gifts were accompanied by a gift tag with one such phrase. For the coffee we used "Thanks a latte!" and for the soap, "Hands down the best teachers!".

I drew a coffee cup holding up a sign reading "Thanks a Latte!" in Adobe Illustrator, printed and cut it out, and then I glued it to a coffee stirrer.

I also thought it would be cute to dress up the coffee cup sleeve with the names of all the children in the class (Disclaimer: no real names were used here). In Adobe Illustrator, I made a stylized handwriting paper to match the stirrer, then added the names.

I then attached it to the coffee cup sleeve using double-sided tape!

The second gift I helped with was the soap which needed a "Hands down the best teachers!" tag. Since the gift and the phrase are really all about hands I immediately thought of hand prints. Hand print crafts are always a hit -- kids get the thrill of smearing paint all over their hands and we parents get a precious hand print keepsake.

I remembered a heart hand print craft that I had seen around Valentine's day and thought the idea could be adapted to the gift tag. So my daughter and I sat down and made two hand prints, one on a sheet of pink construction paper and another on a sheet of blue construction paper. She giggled the entire time (the paint brush tickled her hand)!

I combined the two in Photoshop and added the text. After printing it out, I cut the tag in the shape of a heart and cut a smaller heart in between the hands (for the cellophane wrapping to fit through and ultimately attach the tag to the gift). 

I hope the teachers enjoy the gifts half as much as I enjoyed making the tags!