Today is the last day of school before my kids think they are entitled several weeks to sleeping in LATE, unlimited soda and cookies and non-stop sledding, game boy and other various entertainments, not limited to tormenting one's siblings.  Little do they know that the entire basement is going to be decluttered, painted and cleaned BEFORE January 1st along with two bedrooms that will need some attention too.  And imagine both of their best friends are on vacation…no distractions!!

So in usual fashion, a stamping mother MUST stamp some sort of seasonal gift for the teachers and the bus driver.  Since Denver is usually a few seconds late, I'd like to give the driver a reason to drive by slowly and linger at the stop, giving Denver time to at least grab his backpack.  And he's not the BEST student in the class and again, looking for anything that will give the kid a break.  Seriously, he loves his teacher this year, we were a bit worried as Adria had told him how STRICT she was!  So his grades have improved and he's really trying.  The kids also needed a generic gift under $5.00 to trade with the class.  Boys to boys and girls to girls so that made it much easier. 

Since it's Tuesday's Tools here on the Blog, I thought I share Denver's Under $5.00 Gift. (I think he's secretly hoping to snag his own gift BACK.)  Now I didn't use a tool on this but some guy at the store used something to finish the edges! 

I'm sure you've seen the metal tiles in the Pottery Barn Catalog for SCADS of $$.  We simply called our local heating and cooling company, (we used Interstate Heating and Cooling in Sussex) and had them finish the edges on some galvanized sheet metal.  We asked for the finished size to be 14" x 14".  Cost:  $2.30.  We hit the store and bought a Snowboarding Magazine and Denver cut out his favorite shots.  Cost:  $5.99.  Ok, technically over the limit but Denver and Adria both plan on finishing the boards for their rooms with additional pages, so real cost:  $2.00.  We wanted Sports Illustrated but it wasn't available and I think this turned out better anyway.  I'm sure you would have appropriate magazines lying around.  I unfortunately, didn't.  Unless it was Bowhunter, Musky Fisherman, Big Bucks or Whitetails Unlimited.   We then Modge Podged the photos to the board and  gave a second coat to the board to finish it.  Modge Podge Cost:  1/15 of a bottle.   I did buy a new bottle as I wasn't sure if my existing bottle was any good.  I needed to cover my seat on that one and I didn't want to make a trip back to the store at 11pm.  Cost:$0.50.  I had some magnets lying around here from another project.  So cost is unavailable and I could even deduct some because it's actually doing me a favor.  We punched out 3/4" circles from Real Red and YoYo Yellow Cardstock and used gluedots to attach them to the magnets.  We had 3M mounting tape that we attached to the back to make this a ready to go project.  Again, just lying around taking up space in my junk drawer. 

It would have been fun to Big Shot a name and personalize but since it was random, we couldn't.  Cool quick project that even came in under budget.  I think we needed about 30 minutes for the board and magnets and an overnight dry.  You could use scrapbook paper, real photos, add embellishments to the magnets (stamped images, buttons, ribbons).