Monday, April 11, 2011

Made By Me Monday


I've been hopping on lou's Made By You Monday thing for a few weeks and I've never really mentioned it until now.  This week, she wants us to come show pictures of things we made that would be good teacher appreciation gifts.  Well, this is just perfect timing.  This weekend, I brought home this stool.  I have 3 of these in my classroom and they are the perfect height for my tables and to work at my computers.  Kids literally fight over these stools.  See below.  They have no cushion, but somehow, this cardboard stuff is pretty decent to sit on.  But they are so plain and blah.  I have a vast plethora of maps in my possession.  Maps of Paris, maps of France, of Quebec, St. Maarten, etc.  Basically when kids go somewhere where French is spoken, they bring me back things for extra credit.  Things like maps.

Lately, I have been looking at a bookcase that I have and love.  It has been thrown away on me twice because it looks like crap.  So I thought that if I covered it with maps and made it look like someone wanted it, maybe they won't throw it away.  I've heard of Mod Podge and know people who devote entire sites to it.  In fact, mary loves to talk about using Mod Podge in some of her crafts, so I got some advice from her.

I thought I'd start with a stool and if it works out, maybe I will graduate to the bookcase.  So, I bought some of the paper to non paper surface Mod Podge and got to work.  My plan was not to be all that precise with the cut outs.  I wanted to just cut up a map and paste it on to cover the stool, but it was OK with me if it was random.


I like it.  It's nice and glossy too.  On my next one, I will do the edge and then the top.  This time, I did the edge after, and it has left a little ridge.  I went over this about 6 times, letting it dry each time, so I hope it has a good, thick cover.  Middle school butts are pretty wiggly and I wonder how long this will last.

Gives them one more thing to fight over.  I literally had 2 girls verbally killing each other one day over one of these stools.  They called each other all kinds of names, pulled hair, etc and then one pushed the other off.  Now this will be even more enticing.

So, how does this all fit into teacher gifts?  I really would appreciate a gift like this as a teacher.  It is something I will certainly use in my room and it's covered with something that is exactly what I teach.  It trumps all of those cutesy gifts that I have no use for, the weird gifts that I am slightly afraid of or the food that I promptly throw in the trash when someone gives it to me.

So get your Mod Podge and get to work for the next gift you give a teacher!
**I was not paid for mentioning Mod Podge and I have no affiliation with them.***

NOTE:  After I posted this today, I had a girl sit on the stool in class.  When I asked the class where they thought the Riviera might be, she actually slid off the stool and started looking on the map.  WOW.  That's it, I'm sticking maps on everything I've got now!!

Linking here:
http://www.glitterglueandpaint.com/throwback-thursday-11/
http://www.skiptomylou.org/2010/01/18/made-by-you-monday-2/

3 comments:

  1. The stools look great! Too funny about the girl fights though.

    Thank you for the link. :)

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  2. Wow! I love how it turned out ;)

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  3. I LOVE THIS!!!! Will surely have to try it!!

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