No.2 Pencils

I am definitely tired of filling out forms and picking up school supplies after this first week of school- someone stop the madness! With all the tech savvy out there, cannot we not make these forms electronic and saved year to year?! My address, my kids' names and birthdates and my spouse have not changed in all these year- must I write the same forms (x2 kids) every year??

OK, enough of my school year tirade- I'm just cranky because I must submit my life to the school calendar once again and it plays higgly-piggly with my life. The only plus is that we have great teachers this year and it appears to be shaping up well. Matthew has a fab 2nd grade teacher and he is super excited to go to school each day, so who can ask for more.

I wasn't organized enough to send first day of school treats in with him (and not clear that the middle schooler would think that appropriate!) so I am sending a "thanks for a great start" card and treat with him tomorrow.

I love this boy from the Pure Innocence digital stamp set- Heather Ellis is a wonderful illustrator! I sifted through my patterned paper stash (under the guise of reorganizing!) and found these matching prints. The card base is the new Early Espresso from Stampin' Up (a great rich brown!) with layers of River Rock and a patterned paper piece similar to Riding Hood Red stitched together. I punched binder holes in the notebook patterned paper with the spiral border punch and added a mini library clip as an accent. The lettered paper is from a paper pack called "Homeroom" purchased long ago, with some twine and a button tied around.

The digital stamp was printed on Very Vanilla Cardstock and colored with Copic markers. The lettering on the blackboard was added in Photoshop prior to printing.

The inside of the card has strips of the same patterned papers with a computer generated greeting punched out with the wide oval punch and set on a Baja Blue die cut shape.

Now everyone who has ever taken test knows that you need two No.2 pencils...

These pencils are a real treat, though! The pencil was made by scoring a 3.5"W x 4.75"H piece of So Saffron card stock at 0.5" intervals and wrapping around a tube of Rolo candies. The eraser end was made by adhering a 0.3/8" strip of Pink Pirouette and a 1/4" strip of aluminum foil with a 3/4" Pink Pirouette circle at the top. A Hershey's kiss forms the pencil point and a hand-written "No.2" finishes it off! Now that my middle schooler has seen how fabulous these are, she wants 8 for her cluster teachers!

Hope you're surviving the beginning of school!