Starting to think about Teacher Appreciation Week

In my life before children I was a teacher! Each year my peers and I always looked forward to teacher appreciation week. The first full week in May is a chance for teachers to feel really appreciated for their hard work and dedication to their students. For all of my years teaching here in Virginia I was very lucky to be in a school that made an effort to show their appreciation for their hard work. NOW it is my turn to come up with great ideas, preferably NOT food, for our educators.

This is one craft project that I found. I have created etched glass plates (found them at Wal-Mart for $1.00 each) and used my Cricut to cut out the words.

Here is an example of a glass baking dish with a name etched on the bottom. An excellent idea for teachers! Never lose your baking dish again at a pot luck dinner or leave it at a friends house!
There is an excellent tutorial on the HAPPY VALLEY QUILTER blog. There she shows how to create letters on contact paper using and an xacto knife. When I made my plates I used my Cricut machine and some shelf paper liner that I had left over from a while ago. It worked perfectly. Had to pay special attention to how to cut the letters out so that they show up correctly from the bottom of the dish. Turns out very nicely.

My examples of plates are on my Splitcoast Stampers gallery. My idea of giving the dishes was one of "paying it forward", my kids gave them to the teachers and they could give them as gifts if they wanted to. Click here and here to see them. Good luck.