Gifts for our Chinese Visitors

Each year at the beginning of October, the school I work at hosts a group of 15 - 20 Chinese school children and their teachers.  We do so many activities with them as a school...  cookouts, lake trips, a trip to the fair, classroom tours... etc.  

Last year I made a booklet for each of the students and teachers - this year the idea was bookmarks.

 Our school mascot is the Husky - Hoover Huskies, and the Team Spirit cartridge has such an awesome image... I made one for each of the tour group.

 This is a close-up of the 2 3/4 inch cut and all its layers - black, 3 shades of gray, and white.  It's approximately 15 pieces for each Husky cut.

This piece I cut larger - for me.... It's a 3 1/2 inch cut (It actually didn't fit on the bookmarks.) and turned out quite large!  I took a little extra time to ink the edges, added silver stickles, and a black glaze pen added dimension and shine to the eyes, nose, and some other areas.

We had them laminated, and I was told our visitors LOVED them!  :)

Commissioned Project - Signature Book

A little over a month ago, one of my colleagues came to me about putting together a signature book for one of our very special teachers who was chosen as our Teacher of the Year!

I work with some of her students, have been in some meetings with her and know exactly how fantastic she is!  SO.....  after my normal amount of 'thinking time' for a big project like this, and one false start, this is what I came up with.

The main theme is Spring and along the way  incorporated some of her personal likes/activities.   My Cricut got a good work-out on this project.  Almost every page has Cricut cuts, lettering, and lots of goodies.

 On the front cover I used my Cuttlebug quilled flowers with some lettering from the Plantin Schoolbook cart and lots of inking and Stickles!  If you look closely, you should see the 'fade' inking with 3 shads of pinks.

 I discovered that she is crazy for OSU, and you'll see it incorporated around the book.  The inside cover will be used as a dedication page from the staff.

 Here's another variation on the spring theme with Stampin' Up flower trim, Cricut cuts, and a flower border I found at HL.
*As I was working on the project, I sent out an email to my colleagues looking for some words they would use to describe her and incorporated them into the pages, either cut with different Cricut fonts or stamped and added to the pages.

 These two pages include Stampin' Up doilies I inked and a stamp set with the framelits dies to cut the words.  The Iris stamp comes from another company using the tole technique of layering.  I stamped 5 of these, colored and layered them.

 Here you see another one of the descriptive words from colleagues, a flower border, and a Cottage Cutz die I bought in Tennessee when we were traveling.  I also layered this one, inked, and used the Stickles!

 This page was originally going to be butterflies, bees, and ladybugs, but it seemed WAY too busy, so this is what I came up with.  LOVE these bees!  So pretty!

 Just an OSU page!

 Here we have yellow daisies with blingy centers, white doilies, one of those adjectives, and a fork bow!

 Our campus has a sister school in China with which we have visit exchanges!  Every year they bring students here in October, and we take a group of students in early May.  She's been lucky enough to go to China with this project and will go again, I'm sure!!

This is the last page of the book....  she and her husband are travelers!   Found that out at one of the meetings, and I just had to include it since we are big travelers as well.  AND of course, some more OSU.

I hope you've enjoyed my take on a signature book.... a very specialized signature book!

Cricut Cartridges used:  1.  Walk in My Garden, 2.  Plantin Schoolbook, 3.  Lyrical Letters, 4. Calligraphy Collection, 5.  Pagoda, 6.  Sentimentals
All ink:  Stampin' Up.

Our Chinese Visitors!

 This is a very exciting week at my Elementary School!  We are having our yearly visit with our sister school in China's visitors return!

Last year was my first experience with this AWESOME project our school takes part in.  One of our sponsoring teachers asked me to make something for the visitors to remember their visit to our school.  She's been so kind to order gifts and projects from me before, we went through our usual discussion and idea session, and came up with this.

I used green cardstock for Oklahoma, since we live in what they call "Green Country" though it's been pretty brown this year with the drought!

I lucked out that the Hello Kitty cart had a nice Friends cut, and the other letters were cut and adhered individually.  Oklahoma, the names, and the dragon all have gold Stickles accents.  Each person chose an English name to use.  With the exception of one teacher, and two girls that chose Angel; I added their given names to differentiate the booklets so they wouldn't get mixed up.

There will be 15 visitors in all for the week, 10 kids and 5 teachers.  The assembly on Friday will be GREAT!  We had lots of interesting things to see, a gift exchange between the schools, and I got to see a Native American dance in person.  What an experience that was!  In early May, we send students and teachers over to China for a week to 10 day trip.

 Here's one of the booklets close up.... and if I could figure out how to rotate the pictures with this new interface, it would be in portrait format! 

I am thrilled to know that some of my work will go to China....  so exciting!  I hope they like and appreciate their books.


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Chinese Characters

The school campus I moved to for this year has a partnership with a school in China! Ren He Jie school children (about 10) and five of their teachers came to the US to visit. The started their trip in New York, made a few other stops, came to spend a week with us, and then went on to California.

It was really amazing!

We decorated the school in lots of red, and I remembered the characters on my Cricut Cart. I cut them at 4 inches with the shadow, mounted on white cardstock, laminated them and had them in the hallways along with the other decorations.

I'm definitely making more for the next visit!







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