Spoil Your Teacher on a Budget – DIY Inexpensive Teacher Gifts!

Hi Friends!  I love spoiling my kiddos teachers.  I think they have a hard job, especially depending on which of my kids they have!  There are so many great inexpensive teacher gifts that are easy to make yourself.  They mean so much more to the teachers when they are personalized and they can actually use them in their classroom or at home.

I was a Teacher Appreciation co-coordinator at our elementary school for three years.  I loved making our wonderful teachers all sorts of cute crafts and inexpensive teacher gifts mostly from Pinterest inspiration!  You can check out all the fun ideas I found on Pinterest by checking out my Pinterest board (click here!).

Inexpensive Teacher Gifts

This is an easy one to make to show your appreciation!  A cute pencil vase.  All you need is an inexpensive vase (I got mine from Dollar Store), pencils, and hot glue.  Just hot glue all the pencils onto the glass vase.  Then I put a ribbon around and used my Cricut Explore Air™ to cut out the Thank you phrase and hot glued that on top of the ribbon.  That’s it!  Add some flowers and you’re done!  Super easy project that just takes a few minutes and looks very cute.

I used mine as centerpieces for a catered lunch during Teacher Appreciation week and then I gave the vases to the two teachers my kids had that year.

Another one I made for all 20 teachers at our school is a personalized clipboard.  I had emailed all the teachers asking them a few simple questions, like favorite color, hobby, flower, etc.  I then tried to find some cardstock that went with one of their themes, usually colors.  I wanted to do two different colors so I made 2 inch strips for the bottom and then found a cute piece of cardstock for the top portion.  I cut out all the names with my Cricut.  (I absolutely love my Cricut Explore!  Read my post by clicking here on all the cool things you can make with it!

• First glue down the top piece and bottom strip with glue – I used a glue stick but you can also use mod podge.  Make sure you get the whole paper covered so bubbles don’t form underneath.  Glue names on bottom strip.  Let it dry for about a day.
• Then mod podge over the whole thing.  I kept the top clip open with a zip tie to get underneath it.  Try to smooth out bubbles as you go.  Let it completely dry.
• You can add some ribbon or embellishments to the top.  I added a little puzzle piece with a note about being an important piece of our puzzle since that was what our theme was that week.

Here’s one I made for my daughter:

I love how this one came out.  The paper was part of the My Favorite Things pack from Recollections from Michaels.  There are endless possibilities with this gift!

For a whole list of Teacher Appreciation ideas check out my post by clicking here!!

Thank you for stopping by!  Have a great day!