Free-For-All Friday: Pencil Vase

I am the homeroom mom for Finn's daycare class, which kind of cracks me up.  My responsibilities were much more lax than I think a normal homeroom mom's would be, but either way, the end of the "school year" snuck up on me (as most things seem to these days!) and about a week before his classroom summer party, I was scrambling to send out letters to the other parents so that they could all chip in on a group gift if they so chose. 

A quick Google Images search of teacher's gifts brought up several versions of the pencil vase, which I thought was really adorable.  Finn has 2 teachers in his class (both named Jessica, coincedentally!) so with my limited timeframe, I thought this would be an easy and fun project to whip together. 

I went to Michael's and bought a couple of these glass jars with lids.  I didn't need the lids obviously, but the vases were the perfect size and shape, so I just discarded the lids when I got home.  I bought some very inexpensive Dixon #2 pencils to wrap them in.  Oh, and pay not attention to the mess on my worktable.  I was multi-projecting.  'Nuff said.

Next I just hot glued the pencils around the vase.  You have to pay pretty close attention to the spacing and to make sure you keep them really straight or else the last pencil in will look weird.

Next I whipped up a couple of apples from my Doodlecharms cartridge, and put a green Thickers "J" in each of them for Jessica(s!)

Some bright green ribbon around them, attach the apples and you're done!  I really meant to get photos of the vases with the sunflowers in them (they looked so pretty) but true to form, I ended up buying them at the 11th hour (literally on my way to the school for the party) so I didn't have time to photograph them before I handed them over to his teachers.  The other thing I added was one of those plastic card holders stuck admist the flowers that had a gift card for each teacher, as well as a little 'Thank You' note from the class.  They were a hit!