Annabel and I like to make gifts for her teachers. For teacher appreciation week last week, she wanted to do drawings for each of them, and I thought we'd put her art in little frames that we decorated.
The wooden frames were $1 each at Michaels, and the colored pencils were 10 for $1 at The Dollar Store. Each frame needed 20 pencils each for full coverage.
I made two different types, but because I had to make a bunch at once, I opted for the version that required less cutting (above right).
After measuring how many vertical and how many horizontal pieces I needed, I marked the pencils and got out my Dremel drill. With the drill on high speed, I cut one box of pencils at a time to help keep the colors separated. This way, I avoided having one frame with all black and blue and another with all orange and yellow. Each frame has two yellow, two red, two of each green, and so on. Wear safety goggles! When a Dremel cutting disk breaks, there's no telling where it will end up; with my luck, I'm happy they didn't get lodged in my forehead.
After everything was cut, I laid it all out and smeared a healthy coating of Weldbond glue all over the front of the frames. I did the vertical sides first, then sandwiched those pencil pieces in between the horizontal top and bottom ones.
Annabel drew pictures of 'fireworks' for each 4 x 6" frame. I had a hard time giving them away!
A variation would be to paint the picture frames before gluing the pencils. If you're super busy, try not to do all the cutting and gluing in one day. . . :)
Hopefully, the teachers enjoyed their one-of-a-kind thank you from Annabel. We had fun making them.
xo Karin
