Thanksgiving Teacher Appreciation Mini Pies Thank You and Printable

 Yesterday I posted this Thanksgiving teacher mini pie gift on Instagram. I had a few people ask about how to get the tag. So I decided that I needed to put it on the blog so that people could get it easily.

I made this "We aPIEciate You" tag in PicMonkey for our teachers. I specified it for them and the fact that the PTO was giving it to them. I have now made a few more generic options for those not thanking from a PTO and for those not thanking teachers specifically. There is a single option of each tag (which you can right click and save to your computer), a sheet of the teacher tags (not from PTO), and a blank one with instructions on how to personalize it.

I tied each tag to a mini mason jar pie. These were pumpkin pecan made from THIS recipe. I quadrupled the recipe for the filling for 32 jars and tripled the topping. You could also attach a big ol' pie if it was for one person. You could buy those mini wrapped pies instead of making jar pies. Possibilities are endless.

Teacher/PTO one.

Sheet of Teacher/PTO tags.

PRINT HERE

Teacher/no PTO.

Teacher/no from printable.

PRINT HERE

Thank You Blank.

Okay so for the blank one. Here is how you personalize it.

After you have downloaded the image onto your computer, go to PicMonkey. Under the edit, choose the computer icon. Then select the saved image.

It should look like this.

The font you need is Chunk Five. Add Text.

Make the word of the person you are thanking fit. Also make sure your caps are on. Add spaces or increase the text size to fit the space.

Change the color to 8e0500 in the text edit box.

If you want to add a from, then type the text you want and adjust color and size.

Then you can save and print it off. Woot.

Hope that make sense and that this makes thanking a teacher for Thansgiving easy peasy!

Using PicMonkey to make Invitations

I have made it absolutely no secret on ye old blog how much I love and depend on PicMonkey. I use this amazing online editing program to edit my photos, to create images for t-shirts, and to make posters, hand outs, fliers, newsletters, programs, thank you notes, gift tags, and invitations. 

Over the years I have really honed in on how to use PicMonkey to do almost everything. While I may not have the elaborate functions of a program like Illustrator and that may mean I need to get creative; PicMonkey does offer a glorious amount of functions and edits plus the cost is nothing for the basic membership and practically nothing for the royale membership.

So let's talk about how easy it is to make your own invites. Most of the invites in this post took a little bit more time because several of the overlays I created (I will talk about that a little more in another post). However, PicMonkey has two features that allow you to easily add overlays that you don't have to make.

In the above batman invite, the batman head was designed and created by me in PicMonkey using different geometric overlays, but the bat at the top was an overlay already available. 

But I feel like I am getting a little ahead of myself.

First things first. Get an idea of what you want. When you have an idea, it is easier to create an invite. Once you have an idea, then it is time to start creating.

On the home page is a drop down menu. When creating any new project, you will use the design feature. I most often use the blank canvas feature, but they are also currently testing out a premade template option. I have used that once before on the BLOOM invite toward the end of this post. This feature is by far the easiest and fastest way to make an invite. However, if you want more of a creative say, then the blank canvas option is for you.

The blank canvas option has tons of canvas size options. I most often use 4x6 or 5x7 when I am doing invites.

Once you have your canvas, here is a quick and basic run down of making an invite.

1. Choose a canvas color, aka a background color. When in doubt, stick with white. It is more forgiving and versatile. Plus it is cheaper to print.

2. Pick your overlays, aka your pictures. You can choose from their overlays, or you can search clip art, or icons.

Overlays can be found under the butterfly icon. A whole mind boggling drop down menu of options will appear.

Let's say I am throwing a farm birthday party. I quickly find some adorable farm animals. I choose them and arrange them how I want.

I would really like a cute barn. PicMonkey doesn't have a barn overlay. No worries though. That is where the internet comes in handy. In this instance I simply searched for barn clip art. I found a cute one right away.

After I save it to my computer, I go to the "add you own" button in the overlays. Here you can pick from images you have saved on your computer.

Then put the image where you want it. As you can see, I changed my mind about where I wanted the animals. That is part of the fun. Play around with it. As you can also see, I decided the animals needed some color. This is done SO easily, by clicking on each image and changing the color.

3. Next is the fonts. PicMonkey has a ton of great fonts. Some are only available with the royale membership. You can also use your own fonts. That is right, the fonts on your very own computer. Mix and match fonts. Use a big bold font for themes and main points. Then use a softer simpler font for the bulk of information.

Here I used Chunk Five for the main themes and Geo Sans Light (a personal favorite) for the information. Again, play around with placement and size of the text.

You can approach you text in many different ways. Text can be in a frame.

Text can be different colors or in banners.

The options really are endless.

4. Borders. It is almost always a good idea to add a simple boarder. It finishes off the invite AND makes it easy to cut out. There are a lot of different boarder options found under the picture frame icon. Almost 100% of the time I opt for the Simple Edge. I like that it is cleaner and doesn't distract from the invite.

Once you are done, you will have a really cute invite. An Etsy quality invite that you made completely by yourself. You simple need to save it onto your computer. Then insert it into a Word type document. You can print them off yourself or you can put them on a USB drive and take them to an office supply store. I have done both.

Remember have fun and play around. Explore all the options that PicMonkey has. Whether it be adding your own text into a premade template, like this beautiful BLOOM invite,

or whether it be a compilation of your own creative juices, PicMonkey will up your invite game. Seriously once you start you won't be able to stop.

I hope this was helpful. I tried to keep it informative yet simple. Obviously I could go more in depth about some things (like how I make my own designs using only geometric overlays), but this post was already getting long enough. Like write a novel long, and no one wants to read that novel.

So I will be done with all the instruction now. Again, hope it was helpful!

You Are Gonna Do FANTAstic Tags

Every one needs a little pep talk once in awhile. They especially need it when they have a big event coming up.

In the last several months I have had quite of few beautiful young ladies I know taking college entrance exams. Do you remember those days? Were you cool, calm and collected? Or were you like me...a hot mess?

I wanted to cheer my girls on, so I made these FANTAstic tags and attached them to, you guessed it a colorful bottle of Fanta soda.

I made four different colors to coordinate with four different flavors of Fanta. You can download your very own sheet of good luck tags. Just click on the link below.

Download HERE

I know have a small stock pile of Fanta soda in my food storage just waiting for a moment to wish someone good luck. When the times comes, I can just print off a sheet of tags, cut them out, and tie them to the bottles with a scrap of fabric or yarn.

I am sure this "magic" Fanta good luck gave them the mental power they needed to ace their exams. In short, I am sure they did FANTAstic.

Good luck to you in all your endeavors today, and have a FANTAstic day!

You're So Cool Valentine

It's is February.  Time for some more classroom valentines. Every year I stress that I am officially out of valetine ideas. One of my favorite ways to spark ideas is to hit my stores party aisle. I peruse around and just let my brain wonder. This year I found these sunglasses and immediately jumped on the emoji band wagon. I made these You're So Cool emoji valentines.

Whew. One more classroom valentine done.

I have four classroom valentines to make this year. It will be the first and only time I will have four to make. Next year Oldest will be in Middle School and will be too cool to hand out valentine's.  I have already shared his tweenage approved Valentine for this year over at Skip To My Lou.

But today it is all about this valentine, which Little is not too cool for. In fact, he is just the right amount of cool.

I found these sunglasses at The Mart (Walmart if you don't know my lingo) in the party department. They were super affordable.

I made up this valentine using PicMonkey, and made it available in a pdf.

I attached the sunglasses with a little thread and some tape on the back. These were super fun, super easy, and very kid approved. Short, sweet and to the valentine point.

Download You're So Cool Valentine HERE.

Two down, two to go.

Do you need more classroom valentine ideas? Check out this post of Boy-Approved Valentines.

UPlifting Evening Invitation: YWIE

I said this post was coming, but I fibbed a little about how soon I was going to have it up. I may have said tomorrow when I meant in a week...hehehe.

I shared my UPlifting YWIE last week. This is the invitation I made to go out for it. Today I am going to show how you can customize this invitation for your own event.

I also am showing how I like to package up my invites. One of my favorite ways to hand out invites is using these sweet patterned goodie bags. I bought mine at Zurchers.

I always have some cute washi tape on hand and I use it to close up the baggy envelopes.

I print out invites on card stock because it holds up better.

Now they are all ready to hand out.

Here is the blank invite image that I made using PicMonkey.

If you liked the idea of an UPlifting YWIE and want to have an UPlifting evening of your own, you can use this image for invites for your event.

You need to right click and save the image onto your computer.

I use PicMonkey for the majority of my photo editing and image creating. I highly recommend using it for all of your projects. The basic edits are free, but the Royale membership is pretty cheap and totally worth it and you have access to even more.

Once you download the jpeg for this invite, you can head over to PicMonkey to customize it. On the main page you choose the edit function and then open your photo.

The photo opened in the program will look like this.

Click on the Tt to open the fonts. I used Lato for the ward name, the "please join us on" and the place, time, and the "for an". I had the font at size 100. I showed below about where I moved all the words to.

Next I used the font Coffeebreak. This font is a Royale font only available if you have the membership. However, there are lots of fun script fonts that are free. I used this font for the year, the title "Young Women in Excellence", the date, and later the "lifting" part of UPlifting. The font size was 213.

Next I used Arial Black for UP. I changed the font color to white and I made the size a lot bigger.

Now I went back to coffeebreak and I added the "lifting" in white. Last I went back to Lato, kept it in all caps and typed out EVENING.

So that is the easy peasy way to customize your own invites using this background and PicMonkey. Using PicMonkey is addicting and can make invites, hand outs, and posters so cute.

Hope this simple how-to was helpful.