Tic Tac Toe for Back to School

I love this time of year-- back to school! And no, it's not just that my two older kids have been driving me crazy and I was excited to send them back (though that is a tad bit true.) As a former teacher, there is just something about the smell of a classroom, clean and awaiting new students, that makes me smile! Mostly it's the promise that the new school year holds-- those piles of new notebooks and unsharpened pencils, new school clothes and backpacks all represent the journey that the kids will undertake this school year and makes me wonder where they will be at the end of it next May and how they will have grown and changed.



So my project for this week's round 2 of our Tic Tac Toe challenge is a little teacher gift for the first day of school. This one is actually for my 4 year old's preschool teacher as he doesn't start until next week and her gift is still at my house-- the other two kids already took theirs on back to school night.


This was a really quick and simple gift to make. I used a small legal pad and just covered it by cutting a 5 x 8 piece of paper for the front and gluing it securely to the top of the notebook (not the paper itself). I cut a 5 x 9 piece for the back and folded it over the top to cover where I glued the first piece. The pencil holder is an empty Prima flower bottle that I have been holding onto knowing it was too cute to throw away! It's always great to reuse stuff!

I used some not-so-typical school paper from SEI's Sonoma collection. I really love the colors of these papers and they are perfect for a more vintage look instead of the typical bright primary colors. I thought the sheet of numbers really represented a back to school theme. I also used the Die Cut Labels and Arrows from that collection. These are all a fantastic price right now at the store so make sure you check them out!


For the Tic Tac Toe choices I used distress (dark brown ink around the edges and I used my Zutter Distress-All to roughen up some of the papers), glitter (red Stickles around the apples) and lace. For me lace wasn't an obvious choice for a back-to-school project either but I really loved how it turned out and adds to that vintage look.

Supplies used:
5 x 8 legal pad
Prima flower bottle
SEI Sonoma papers and die cuts
Stickles-- Red
Colorbox Fluid Chalk-- Chestnut Roan
Pink Paislee Expressions Whimsies Alphabet-- Chocolate (wow! only $1.00)
Misc. lace, clip, buttons and bakers' twine
Sizzix apple die

YOUR Tic Tac Toe projects so far are phenomenal! Check out everything that has been entered so far by clicking here, it's definitely worth looking! There are still a few more days to enter this challenge for your chance to win a $20.00 voucher to The Beary Scrap so spend some time this weekend getting your creative juices flowing.