Spreading Some Christmas Joy

My 7th-grader adores her teachers. Now that she is in middle school with a whole set of academic teachers rather than the single classroom teacher she had in elementary school, it would be easy to call it quits on teacher gifts. But she'll have none of that. Last year she wanted to give a little something to her core academic teachers for Christmas, so she made them THESE little sets of holiday gift tags. She made similar sets of gift tags for her Girl Scout co-leaders this year and packaged them in little glass jars (sadly, we forgot to take photos before she presented them!). But with six school teachers she wanted to remember with gifts and four Sunday School teachers (a teacher and helper for each of my kids), we had a list of 10 folks that we wanted to do a little something for, which left me scratching my head.

Luckily, all that head scratching struck during my daughter's Girl Scout fall candy & nut sale. This is an optional fundraiser that her troop tried out for the first time this year. I spied these fabulous cans of candy fruit slices ($5 for 14 oz), and decided that with six cans, we could repackage the candy with some fun handmade packaging and spread a little sweet Christmas joy to all 10 teachers. It was a win-win situation: we found a great product to turn into a meaningful gift AND supported her troop at the same time. Here's how our gifts turned out.
The handstamped gift bags and tags were inspired by this fabulous creation made by my sweet blogging friend Emily Niehaus. I loved how she took a plain paper bag (far cheaper than a handled one, which start at 59 cents each at my A. C. Moore) and gave it an upscale look simply by creating handles with an oval punch! I found a package of 10 plain white "craft sacks" by Paperbilities (measuring 4.75" across by 8.5" tall) at A.C. Moore for $1. Yup, that's just 10 cents each!!

My daughter and I worked together assembly-line style to stamp each bag with some candy stamps from The Angel Company (which I've had forever!) and the fruit slice stamp from Stampin' Up's Tart & Tangy set, using ink colors to match the candy. We repackaged the fruit slices in clear cellophane treat bags which are now nestled inside the white gift bags for giving.

All that remained was to tie on some coordinating gift tags. I had the best time creating these with digital papers and elements from Cosmo Cricket's Jolly by Golly collection and Echo Park's Everybody Loves Christmas collection. The sentiment is a stamp from Unity's Greetings of Christmas kit, and the frame is from Just Wanted to Say, an {ippity} by Unity kit. I'm entering it in the Unity Gift Wrapping challenge, which includes gift tags. Here's a closeup:
In other news, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who sent good wishes my way after being featured as Moxie Fabber of the Week over at Paper Crafts' Moxie Fab World yesterday. I am completely honored, as well as flabbergasted, to have been chosen!! When Cath Edvalson emailed me back in October to say that she wanted to feature me, you could have knocked me over with a feather. In fact, I'm still pinching myself!! And as exciting as all of this has been, I have been even more overwhelmed by the ensuing avalanche of warm words and congratulations from so many folks either by email, comments here, or comments on the MFW post. Warm fuzzies are the best :). THANK YOU!!

Thanks for sticking with me through this loooooooooooooong post. And, as always, many thanks for sharing my little slice of bliss!
Emily