Easy, sweet, and useful teacher appreciation gift

This year Mini Me has six teachers and associates to honor for all their hard work.  He was blessed with some great teachers and I think it's important to show them our appreciation.  I couldn't afford nice gift certificates for all of them, but I still wanted to give a gift that was useful and had Mini Me's personal touch. 

Stemming from an idea here, I decided to make a hand-themed gift with personalized hand soap, hand scrub, and a handmade drawing from Mini Me.  If the teachers don't want to use the soap at home, they can leave it at school.  If hand scrub is not their thing, I'm only giving a small amount so they shouldn't feel too bad if they pitch it and just keep the cute container!  I don't want them to feel burdened by a sit-and-gather-dust kind of gift so I tried to make it as simple and useful, yet meaningful, as possible.

Supplies:

* The hand scrub jars are 6 oz plastic containers from JoAnn Fabrics and I just saw them there again this week.  At $.69 they were a bargain and just the right size!

 Steps:
First, I looked up some quotes and verses that went with our hand theme.  On the soap, we have Psalm 47:1, "Clap your hands all people!  Shout to God with loud sounds of joy!"  On the lid labels we printed, "You took my hand, opened my mind, and touched my heart".  

Making the soap labels was tricky for me at first.  I used the profile photo of Mini Me from when I made his silhouette canvas.   I put the photo in Paint and blacked out his face and hair to look like a silhouette.  I copied that into Word where I designed a sheet with the Bible verse and his silhouette head.  Finally, I printed it on a laser jet printer on clear transparency.  (Ink jet printers will not work).  

As a variation, you could have your child draw with pencil on paper, then trace their pencil lines with marker and have it copied onto transparency sheets.  You could also do a number of fancy monograms or graphics... pretty much anything as long as it can be copied or printed with a laser jet onto transparency sheets. 

I used Word again to make the circular lid labels with the other hand quote.  

I had Mini Me draw a little picture on each lid label.  This was a feat because he doesn't like to sit and draw.  It took a few sessions to finish, but they are cute and meaningful since he did them!  

Mini Me and I also traced his hand on six small lunch sacks, and inside the traced hand he signed his name.  Another feat... accomplished!  His teachers know his disdain of sitting to color so they will surely appreciate this.

I used Goo Gone to remove all the labels from my hand soap and it worked great!  I cut up the transparency labels and stuck them inside the soap bottle.  I rolled it to get it in the top, then used the soap pump to poke it into place.  

I cut out all the labels I'd printed on card stock for the hand scrub jars, and Mod Podged them into place.  I let them dry overnight.  

 Next, Mini Me helped me make the sugar scrub.  There are sugar scrub recipes aplenty on the Internet.  Here is the one I used.

I should have used sunflower oil instead of olive oil because the smell of olive oil is very strong so it took over the brown sugar smell a little but the final product is fabulous for any dry skin and smells like cookies baking (to me, anyway!)
Mini Me helped me mix - we did the sugars first, then the liquids.  

 Finally, we put everything together.  

 I think it's a cute way to tell his teachers that their hard work is appreciated.  I anticipate doing variations of this theme for future teachers!

 This gift cost less than $3 total... not that I was trying to cheap out on the teachers, but it was great to be cost efficient!