Teacher Gift

When I wrote a few weeks ago about making the wreath out of paper hand cutouts, I suggested that I might try to make a felt version for Sprout's teacher as a gift from her class. So, voila - there it is!

The teacher had each child trace a hand and sent the tracings home to me. Hopefully she doesn't know why...

I cut the hands out of green felt and wrote the kids' names on the middle fingers (no, not as a gesture to the teacher - because they tended to the be the biggest fingers to write on) in fabric paint (gold glitter - sparkly!)

Once all the names were dry, I arranged them in two layers - big hands on the outside, smaller ones on the inside and stuck them together with Tacky Glue (I am out of hot glue - and I always hurt myself with it anyway!) I filled in under where the bow was going to go with "fake" hands so no one's name is covered.

To reinforce the whole thing I cut a ring out of a soda box (classy, right?) and glued it onto the back. Then trimmed all the places where "Pepsi" was showing between the fingers.

Then...(this is turning into a saga...sorry) the fingers on the top were flopping down, so I sprayed the back of them with fabric stiffener (yes, there is such a thing...like super starch). And then attached a very glittery bow. I used the glitter paint to write 2008 on the bow.

I think it turned out super cute (if slightly more involved than I thought it might be) and I hope the teacher likes it!

If I did it again I would try to find a way for the kids to help (oops). I was being insanely control-freakish about the whole thing since I didn't know what I was doing. Not proud of that part...