DIY Teacher Appreciation Gift Card Holders

Looking for a creative way to express gratitude to your child’s teacher at the end of the school year? Consider personalized gift cards! One of my favorite projects involved crafting unique Valentine’s Day cards in 2012 and 2013. Drawing inspiration from those designs, I decided to create custom gift cards for my children’s teachers. With camera in hand, we headed to the park to bring this vision to life. These thoughtful and practical personalized gift cards are sure to be appreciated, especially since teachers love gift cards. Also consider crafting a heartfelt gratitude message or adding an inspiring quote to the card to make it even more meaningful.

Supplies:

Black poster board
Scissors
Camera
Computer
X-Acto Knife
Gift Card
PicMonkey

Directions:

To create a photo prop for my children, I used black poster board that I cut to size. I estimated the dimensions of a large gift card and roughly trimmed the poster board to 10 x 15 inches so that my kids could hold it while I took their pictures.

I then downloaded the photos onto my computer, and edited them through PicMonkey’s Photo Editor. Since I didn’t know my idea would actually work…I didn’t add any text to the photos using PicMonkey. But I wish I had. I was short on time and didn’t have time to re-do the photos to my liking. That’s what I get for doing this at the last minute. But wouldn’t it have been cute to add some text to the black poster board my kids were holding?

When I uploaded the photos to Costco’s Photo Center, I ordered the 5×7 size photos. The 4×6 photos just seemed a little too small for this project.

After picking up the photos from Costco, I used an X-Acto knife to cut around my children’s hands. It was then that I realized just how differently both of them held the poster board….and so I had this feeling that it would work for one picture but not the other.

But much to my surprise! It worked for both! I had to cut more around my son’s hands in order to fit the gift card nicely into the photo.

With my daughter’s card, I thought perhaps the gift card might slide out because I didn’t get to cut into it much…but it was snug enough in there that I was okay with it. And I probably would have just added a piece of tape to the back to hold it securely onto the picture if it didn’t work out.

Here’s a close look of what the cards looked liked after I inserted the gift cards. Find out what sort of gift cards they may like. Typically vanilla gift cards, Target, Amazon, Starbucks are some of the best ones to receive.

I didn’t want to put these in a plain old envelope…so I found these boxes from my favorite Japanese dollar store ($1.50) Daiso. We added some shredded paper filling (also from Daiso) to the bottom of the box and place the photos on top.

I then had my children fill out this “All About My Teacher” questionnaire. You’ve probably had one of these filled out by your child for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. And so I thought it would be cute for the kids to fill one out about their teacher.