It’s that time of year with Teacher Appreciation week coming to an end and the school year coming to an end very soon many of you are probably thinking about a small gift to give your children’s teacher.

Well I have a fantastic, inexpensive idea for you.  Here’s what you need:

• 1 clay pot mine was $1.25 at Walmart but with a good sale or coupon it could be cheaper at the craft stores
• some paint I used paint I had from other projects but noticed that the small bottles at Walmart were .53
• Floral Tape $1 a roll at Walmart
• Some fake flowers .94 for a small bouquet with 6 flowers
• a bag of rice or beans roughly $1 at Walmart
• a package of ball point pens (you probably have some free ones laying around from when school started)

You may also want to have a flexible measuring tape, a sharpie, chalk, a sponge brush and the hot glue gun

  Here’s the pot being painted, it took several coats of paint to cover nicely but it honestly didn’t use much out of the jar so you could make several of these without needing to buy more paint.  I may make several to take to the Farmer’s Markets with me in the future.  

Here’s the completed gift.  We used the measuring tape to help measure out the markings so that the rim looks like a ruler and Shawn wrote a message on the front in chalk.  To make the flower pens I popped the tops off the pens, put some hot glue on the flower stems and shoved them into the pen, then wrapped the pen with floral tape.  Before you add the rice to the pot make sure you tape off the stupid hole in the bottom (this might be experience talking LOL) add your rice and pens and Voila and adorable (cheap) teacher’s gift.   I figure this gift cost me about $4 to make I did have to buy 3 rolls of floral tape but didn’t even use half of one roll so I have plenty for my next project I also bought 3 bouquets of flowers but only used half of them.  I plan on using the rest of the flowers to make more pens and trying to sell them but you could make them up and put them away until you need another gift.