Crafts - 32/34 - The Idea Room

Personalized Hand Sanitizer & Soaps

In need of some great and extremely useful teacher gifts? Have a germ-a-phobic friend? or a friend with a new baby trying to keep germs away from well-wishers? Try making some Home Made Soap Bottles. I saw this idea about two years ago on a local television show and have made several as gifts since then.

Simply print your own personalized message or quote onto some transparency film using a laser printer. If you don’t have a laser printer, print it out with your ink jet printer and then copy it onto the transparency film. You can also take your paper and have the copy center copy it onto transparencies which is usually around $1. The reason it needs to be copied or printed from a laser printer is so the ink will no run and fall apart in the soap.

If you don’t want to come up with your own, I am providing you with the template I have used.

**Click here for a downloadable template, or on the image below…

You may need to resize it according to the size of your bottles. Then personalize it by adding a name (etc.) to the top and underline it in a font of your choice and size. Crop to fit if needed. It should be 3 inches wide by 3.5 inches high for the hand soaps and 3 inches wide by 4 inches high for the sanitizer bottles I used.

I usually buy my soap from the dollar store, but there are also places who sell the empty soap bottle dispensers online.

Anyways, below is a tutorial, of sorts, to help you come up with the finished product.

Remove all stickers and labels from the bottles. I got my paper labels wet and they easily scraped off. To clean off any glue residue, I used Goof Off which I had bought earlier to remove a million stickers manufacturers had placed on our girls headboards. (Why do they do that??). If I remember right, I bought it at Home Depot.

Cut around your printed label as straight and as close as you can get to the writing so that it fits properly into your bottle. Check before you cut the bottom of the label to be sure that it will sit as high in the bottle as you would like to to.

Roll up the label so that the writing is in front. I roll mine backwards. Stuff it into the bottle carefully.

Use the soap dispenser to push the label to the front wall of the bottle and to straighten it in the right position.

And…There you go! Some practical and affordable gifts that are sure to please.

February 27, 2009 · Filed under: Crafts, Gifts, Teacher Gifts, Tutorials Tagged with

70 Things We Love About You…

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When my mother-in-law turned 70, we wanted to give her something a little different. We had all her children, their spouses and her grandchildren write down a list of things that they loved about her. We gathered them together and typed them all up so that we had 70 different things. I typed up each statement and then we cut the paper into 70 strips, each strip containing what was said and by whom. I decorated a brown paper box (found at Robert’s) and covered it with scrapbook paper using Mod Podge. We placed all the strips inside the box. Hopefully it will be something she can pull out every once in a while and enjoy.

February 16, 2009 · Filed under: Crafts, Gifts, Moms, Mother's Day Tagged with Fun Scrapbook Idea, Personalized Birthday Gift

Love Pillow

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We started a new tradition this Valentine’s Day at our home. I made a “love pillow” to help the kids do kind but anonyomous things for one another. The rules are that if you find the pillow on your bed, then someone has done something in secret for you. You then have 24 hours to do something nice for someone else (ie. make their bed, hang up their wet towel, do one of their chores, hang up their laundry, etc.). When you have completed it you put the pillow on their bed.

It has been pretty fun to see how excited and secretive the kids get about what they are going to do. My child who has difficulty making his own bed, suprised me the other morning by making my bed! Hmmmm! We have seen some good things happening here….we hope it becomes a long-standing tradition.

You can do this at your home to. You don’t have to make a pillow, just use a designated stuffed animal or just leave a note. But if you do want to know how I made this pillow, click here for the Tutorial.