Preschool is OVER!

We made it!  Bubba got through his first year of school with no major incidents and only a few minor ones.  His teachers have been great and I wanted to send a little "Thank You" to them.  Same as with my Christmas gifts, I wanted to avoid food products and gift cards.  I've seen several different versions of this idea on Pinterest, but I put my own twist on this.  I wanted to keep it simple and good quality.  This is what I came up with:

I got a couple of mason jars (no shortage of those here!) and decided to fill it with orange paper shreds/gift filler.  The problem?  I couldn't find that stuff in orange ANYWHERE!  Finally I gave up searching and just bought orange gift tissue.  I took out two sheets, folded them back up, and cut them into thin slivers with my paper trimmer.  Then I took the pile of sliced tissue and just separated it with my fingertips.  Easy peasy, inexpensive, and I have most of the package leftover to use for something else.

In the jars I put a tube of L'Occitane Passionate Jasmine Shea Butter hand cream and a bottle of orange Essie nail polish. I cut a circle of patterned paper from the Doodlebug Happy Harvest 6" x 6" pad (the Fall Flowers double sided cardstock) for each jar and also two circles of orange cardstock in slightly different shades using a die cutter and wafer dies. (Um... when did QK become WRMK???  Totally out of the look here!!!) I used a ruler to draw the lines for the orange sections on the back of the darker shade and cut them out with my X-Acto knife.  I then glued it to the top of the other cardstock circle and used a blending tool to apply Distress Ink in Spiced Marmalade to the edges. I punched a few hearts using the Stampin' Up Owl punch (that my neighbor kindly loaned me - DANG I need one of these things!!!) from a third color of orange cardstock. I cut the hearts in half to make the seeds.

For the bird I used the smaller of the Spellbinders Mixed Media Birds One dies.  I cut them from a blue paper that coordinated with my patterned paper and inked the edges using a blending tool and Distress Ink in Salty Ocean.  I outlined the bird and its wing with a fine tipped black pen and also used that to draw its eye.  I added a tiny dot of white ink with a gel pen to give the eye dimension.

I typed up my sentiment in Photoshop and printed it on white cardstock.  I trimmed it, adding the little flag to one side.  I glued the bird to one side of the banner and adhered it to my orange slice with foam squares for dimension. A little ribbon to tie it to the jar ring and BOOM!  Done. I made one for his teacher and one for her aide.

Kindergarten in two months!!!  ACK!  Where has the time gone?