Make a Personalized Gift that the Teacher will Love!
This little gem was a wedding gift for my son's Kindergarten teacher, but it would also make an excellent end-of-year gift, birthday present or Valentine's day gift!
It can be time consuming so a little forethought and coordination is in order.
Step 1: Take the Pictures
There are several ways of coordinating the picture. The key is to try to make it as convenient as possible in order to get maximum participation. I DO NOT recommend asking the parents to take individual pictures and sending them to you. You will have too many variances in picture quality, colors and some parents will not participate at all (too busy with work, etc, etc).
Timing was perfect for us. The teacher was getting married the day after Halloween so she took a personal day when we were having a class party. We simply added the picture station as one of the activities. =) We had the same person taking the pictures so they knew exactly how to shape the little hands into hearts. Each shot had the same lighting and paper background in different colors. Keeping every shot as similar as possible is important! It will make your job much easier when it comes to organizing and cropping the pictures.
It's hard to see due to my not-so-perfect picture taking skills (obviously I did not take the hand pictures) but some of the fingers were covered with Cheetos, a flaw that added cute character to the picture (the teacher found it hilarious). We also allowed the children to choose their own background picture. Afterwards, we cropped the pictures to make them look uniform.
My Plan B was to offer times after school to take the picture so that the parents could bring their child by as they were picking them up for the day. This would have taken some coordination with the school and sending secret messages out to the parents. Of course this is only IF you are trying to surprise the teacher. Thank goodness we did not have to go to Plan B!
Step 2: Organize in a collage
Once all of the pictures are ready, organize them into a collage. I utilized a free collage site. They design the collage for free, but if you want the rights to the collage WITHOUT their company logo, you have to pay a small fee. I used Photovisi and paid $1.99 for the collage. The program pretty much did the work for me. All that I had to do was drag which picture I wanted where. The hardest part for me was deciding how I wanted to mix the colors.
Step 3: Print
It is my personal preference not to use Walmart or Walgreens for this type of project because some of my pictures in the past have had questionable quality. Since this was a gift, I chose to order from a "professional" printing site. I used Nations Photo Lab for this task. The options were a little overwhelming but I went with the most basic picture that I could order. The shipping was super fast which helped me stick to my deadline. Another plus for utilizing an online site is that you can shop around…and search for coupon codes!!!
Step 4: Make your Final Product
Here is another area that can be personalized to your teacher's taste. I bought a blue frame because it was Mrs. S's favorite color. I also wanted to add a message with the year so that she would remember who gave it to her for years to come. I would not suggest getting the engraving from a large craft company starting with an M. I got a quote for $20 for the plate alone. Also, they send the plate out for engraving taking an additional 2 weeks. They also charged a price per letter. RIP OFF! I prefer to support a local privately owned company when it comes to engraving. The customer service I got was MUCH better than at the craft store. The final product was a fraction of the price and they engraved right then and there. It took all of 15 minutes and only $15 for the WHOLE thing. I didn't have to deal with buy the plate and pay per letter nonsense.
The teacher loved this personalized gift. The children were proud that they were able to contribute by modeling their hands. Yes, a lot of thought and planning went into this little picture... but it was worth it! If you do something similar for YOUR teacher, he or she will absolutely love it. If they do not appreciate it, I think they are in the wrong field. =P