Hi, this is Rebecca from Roots And Wings Co. I am honored to be asked, again, to guest post for Cindy of Skip To My Lou! This year I am thinking about teacher appreciation gifts from the point of view of the teacher. After 5 long years of going to school to become a teacher myself, I just got my teaching degree! As I embark on my career of being a teacher, I knew I wanted to come up with something that a teacher would actually use. I also wanted it to be school related, but not tacky or the same thing they always get. So, I made some customized jewelry. Make sure to find out your teacher’s favorite color and do this jewelry in that color, or to match a favorite outfit of hers. I made my jewelry out of polymer clay (a favorite medium of mine!).

-Roll out a piece of clay that thicker than a quarter of an inch (so it wont be so fragile). I chose to make mine be different shades of purple here.

*I also made a black/gray one, but I wanted the lines on the diagonal. The above shows how to do that.

-Print a picture of a pencil, and then add the teacher’s name in the middle of it. Cut this out.

-Use a lead pencil and trace all lines of the name and pencil, a few times. Turn this pencil upside down and lay it over your prepared piece of polymer clay.

-Use the pencil as a guide to cut the pencil shape out with a razor.

-Color on the backside of the paper pencil, with the lead pencil.

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*This is transferring the words and lines that you traced, onto the clay.

-Use those traced guides and etch the lines into the clay.

-Add holes for adding it to the jewelry. On the purple pencil I added 2 holes along the top so this piece will hang horizontally. For the black pencil I added metal with a loop right into the clay, for this one to hang vertically. Bake as directed on your clay package.

-To make sure the name was more visible I filled it in with nail polish. Any nail polish that got outside of where I wanted it to, I erased with nail polish remover!

-String these up however you want them on a necklace. I also made up matching bracelets to go with them.

Thanks, Cindy, for inviting me to be a part of this really fun Teacher Appreciation series!

You might also like these other teacher appreciation ideas.

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