Monday Made It and Giveaway Announcement

This is my first Monday Made It and I am linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics. I have things to share with everyone...
My first project is a Thumbprint Flower Pot.
The first time I made this was for a wonderful volunteer that I had. She ran the Roots of Empathy program for my class and was ah-mazing. I had so many compliments on it that I made a second one today with my own kids and nephews as a gift for my mom for her 60th birthday. It's a pretty easy craft, although (not gonna lie) it can be time consuming to make all the little bugs.
Materials:

• terra cotta plant pot with tray
• blue and green acrylic paint
• stamp ink
• fine tipped Sharpie
• varnish
• flowers of your choice

Steps:

1. Paint entire terra cotta pot and tray blue. Paint about halfway down the inside, too. Let dry and then paint again.

2. Using green paint, paint pointer fingers green and have kids lay their finger along bottom of pot with tip of finger pointing toward the top of the pot. This will be the grass so you will need to have many fingers along the bottom edge of the pot (it also looks great if they are different heights).

3. One at a time, kids stamp their thumb into their choice of colour and press gently onto blue "sky" part of pot. Staggering the thumbprints looks the best-don't forget to have prints on each "side" of the pot.

4. Add the kids names and bug details to the thumbprints with a fine-tip Sharpie marker. Use Ed Emberley's books as a guide {he's incredible}.

             

                                            

5. Stand back and appreciate all of your hardwork and skill! Yahoo! Now shellac the pot. Let dry and shellac again!

It's done! I planted flowers in the ones I gave my volunteer and my mom but you can use this pot to hold pens, pencils, rulers, signs, etc...so fun!

I am thinking ahead to Christmas presents to make with the kids and am thinking small terra white pot, brown thumbprints, red mini pompoms would = extremely cute reindeer pencil holder or fill with candies? So cute and so many possibilities!

My second Monday Made It is a little set of level book bin letters, book labels and a reading log. I am trying to revamp my library and have made these little signs using the *free*polka dot border set from GRAPHICS FROM THE POND. The font is Elephants in Cherry Trees from Kevin and Amanda. 

I colour coordinated my book labels by using red borders for fiction, blue borders for nonfiction, and yellow borders for magazines. The reading log is what I have been using for the last two years with my grade 2/3s and it works really well for the little guys. I am hoping that by coordinating the colours they'll have an easier time determining genre when colouring in the code. 

{click to get Level Labels A-S}

{click to get Book Bin Labels}

{click to get Reading Log}

Whew! I hope that someone gets some inspiration from my Monday Made Its...what a great way to share and show. Thanks, Tara, for a wonderful idea.

ps Here are a couple of really awful pictures (eeeekkk) of our other Monday Made It project...painting the kitchen. It's taken 3 years to agree on a colour, but Pyramid Gold now graces the walls of our kitchen. Honestly, this was NOT a colour that we had contemplated or talked about or researched on Behr's site (yup I am a regular on that site). I walked in the paint store, saw the sample and decided THIS is the colour we need. Hubster loves it, I love it, all is good.

*****I HAVE {ALMOST} REACHED 200 FOLLOWERS...PLEASE CHECK BACK TOMORROW FOR GIVEAWAY DETAILS YOU WON'T WANT TO MISS!!**********