Scrabble tile teacher gift ornaments and homemade wrapping paper

Here are our countdown to Christmas activities for the last 2 days (since we failed to get anything done yesterday).

Day 12 Make teacher gifts
Day 13 Play games under the Christmas tree and make wrapping paper

Since we have been playing games in front of the tree almost everyday it didn't end up being a special activity today  but it did allow for more time to get caught up on making the teacher gifts as the girls did some colouring on the floor under the tree as I got all the supplies organized. When I saw THIS idea I knew it would be perfect!

Sierra's kindergarten teacher, her principal and her school worker will all get desk name plates.

Her librarian, music teacher and the second teacher in her class will get tree ornaments. Aayla's daycare teachers will all get the tree ornaments as well.

I think they turned out super cute and were very affordable to make. I bought a scrabble game at the thrift store (so I didn't have to use my vintage scrabble tiles that I am saving for who knows what).

From the one thrift store game I had enough scrabble tiles to make almost all the name plates and ornaments (11 in total) saying either a teacher's name, noel or peace. I only had to use about 6 vintage tiles so that was good!

My vintage stash of scrabble tiles :)

We used a full wooden tile holder for the name plates and cut some in half to make the ornaments. This was easily done with a small saw (thankfully I kept some of the holders from my vintage sets so I had enough).

Next the girls painted all the wooden tile holders with red, glitter paint to add a bit of sparkle.

 We set them aside to dry and then made the wrapping paper below while they dried. We placed them on a wire rack to dry so the paint wouldn't stick to the paper.

After they were dry we hot glued on the scrabble tile letters to spell the desired names or words. We also glued on some berry sprigs I had left over from last Christmas.

Originally I planned to add hangers to them all but I decided the teacher names would be better left as a name plate for their desks. The ornament hangers are just a loop of ribbon I got at Micheals from the $1 bin today and we hot glued them into place.

I have another gift for Mrs Gill I hope to get completed tomorrow if time permits.

We also made wrapping paper today so we can get these gifts wrapped and ready to take to school for the Christmas concert on Thursday.

Here are the two simple wrapping paper ideas we made:

Marble painted and twig painted
First put some red paint in a bowl with a small spoon and a marble. Roll the marble around in the bowl to give it a good coating of paint. Place a piece of paper inside of a box lid and roll the marble around. Scoop the marble out of the box and back into the bowl of paint to recoat the marble and then drop it back on the paper again and roll it around the box lid until you are happy with the coverage.

Next use a branch sprig with green paint and print the sprig onto the paper.

Cookie cutter paper
It is as simple as it sounds :) All you need to do is put some paint on plates, stamp a Christmas cookie cutter in the paint and then stamp it on the paper to make a print. Voila! That's all there is to it.

Both wrapping paper ideas are super easy and require little assistance and you should have all these supplies already at home :)

Here is how our gifts look all wrapped up and adorned with some red lace for ribbon and the gift tags we made last week (see that post HERE).

As for Elfie...since I missed yesterdays post here is where we found him yesterday morning...sitting in the blinds reading Christmas cards.

And this morning we found him in the bathtub boat. I hope it was an ice breaker so he didn't get stuck last night on his way back to the North Pole!