I suffered a bout of illness, along with Russell, to start July this year. It’s a problematic bout of illness that has scuppered a number of plans that we held, none more important than our 10th wedding anniversary, which we didn’t celebrate with a gift or card passing between us, only some paracetamol and some sad looks. As well as plans for celebration, this disease that shall not be named, a pandemic that is now five years beyond its naming convention year, has scuppered my induction into he woodworking group and sent my usual July tasks into disarray, including the making of the end of year gifts for teachers.

I’d usually give quite a bit of thought to the teachers gifts, but I had four days to devise, make and get ready whatever I was going to do for the end of the year, and we are still feeling very much under the weather, despite all tests being clear for the last few days. The first idea: wooden signs, did not go to plan. I had a handsome slice of wood, and the plan had been to apply some heat transfer vinyl that was sublimation-dye receptive and make wooden door plaques. I spent quite a while designing the actual plaque graphics for the entire idea to fail in the production stage. The HTV seemed to adhere perfectly well, but the sublimation ink transfer was extremely patchy, and the idea had to go in to bin along with the chunk of wood.

I managed to regroup my thoughts and spent a sleepless night of coughing working out what I was going to create for the end of year gifts. I ordered a couple of metal door plaques and had everything else already. Two days before the end of term I designed and made everything that I planned.

For each teacher I have made a door plaque for their future classroom or office door or wall, a pencil case, and a bookmark. There is also an engraved pen with a generic message from Bean that I had from a set I purchased a few years ago.

The styles for each teacher are different, partly because they each have distinct personal styles and aesthetics, and partly because it stopped me growing bored of the task whilst I was unwell and slightly unwilling.

Pencil Cases

For Christmas 2024 I am going to make pencil cases as little gifts for Bean’s classmates. There are 35 kids in Bean’s class (which is a ridiculous class size as class overcrowding here is a huge problem), so I thought I’d make a couple of trial run pencil cases to test techniques. I wasn’t sure whether to do a colour sublimation print on the canvas cases or use some HTV, possibly a flock HTV, to make a design.

Sublimation Onto HTV

I decided to go with a sublimation HTV just to see how well the image transfers. This involves using an HTV medium to adhere to the fabric and then sublimating directly onto that medium. I used the print & cut feature of the Cricut software to cut the sublimation print to the same dimensions as the sublimation HTV, which helped with aligning the print and allowed me to use a buff-coloured edge around the print rather than defaulting to white. The print is fine. Maybe a little soft, but by no means problematic.

Direct Sublimation

After making the first pencil case I moved confidently onto the second, as I had prepared the materials for both cases together. When I got to the sublimation transfer stage, however, I made an error that would have been easily avoided. I used a piece of paper to protect my heat mat, without taking into account that the paper had the faint impression of some overlap ink from a previous project. This ink readily transferred straight onto the fabric of the pencil case and ruined that piece. Annoying, but it also showed clearly that the fabric of the case would accept a vivid sublimation transfer directly. I printed a second pencil case design and this time skipped the HTV layer.

I prefer this iteration of the project for two reasons. Firstly, the design is seamless as the print is ‘baked in’ to the very fibres of the case. The design has about the same level of print softness around the edges as the HTV and the text reads fine, maybe with a slight loss of sharpness in the finest characters (the % symbol, mainly). Secondly, dismissing the need for the HTV layer cuts down significantly on both the materials cost and the time cost and complexity of the product as it removes the need to design, calibrate and cut a separate HTV layer. This is how I shall be making the class pencil cases, and it comes with the added benefit that curious and active little fingers won’t be tempted to try and scratch off the HTV layer. This is the happiest of accidents.

Door Plaques

I picked up some aluminium door plaques partly because I wanted to offset the disappointment of the wooden door plaque idea not working out, and partly because I had a gift voucher for an online store which I was awarded for changing phone providers. I figured that the remaining metal plaques would make good future gifts for any kids who might like a door sign, or for the in-laws who subscribe to the Live, Laugh, Love school of home decor where you don’t have to be crazy to live there, but it helps.

I went with a simple decorated name for each of the teachers, because it hadn’t yet been announced whether the teachers were staying on and teaching, moving, or transferring to administrative roles, and I figured a name plaque would be good for either office or classroom.

The image transfer onto these plaques is absolutely *chef’s kiss* sublime. I could not love it more. They are vibrant, sharp and rich. 10/10, no notes. A good addition to the emergency gift armoury.

Bookmarks

I hadn’t intended to make bookmarks for the teachers, but whilst I was sorting out my materials for the other projects I found a bookmark I had made for one of the teachers at the same time I made hand painted custom bookmarks, for each of the students in Bean’s class. I had intended to make a bookmark for each of the teachers, too, but as I had made the children’s bookmarks in their house colours I wanted to make the teacher’s in their house colours too, however I never did find out the house colour for one of the teachers, and then couldn’t very well give the other teacher the one that I had already made for them. But still, seven months on and it was senseless letting it go to waste, so I made a very quick and simple acrylic bookmark for the other teacher, no worries about house colours or it being the same style.

I didn’t realise until after I had made it that I put the name on the second bookmark in the opposite orientation to what I had intended, but I was on the home straight and honestly, it’s fine. I had made some almost identical bookmarks for family Christmas Cracker gifts during the festive period, and though I had run out of the two tones of gold vinyl I used for those, I managed to find a colour shifting metallic and a pink vinyl to pair for this last gift.

The Year End

Despite the challenge of illness disrupting these projects, I’m happy that I found a way to make the teacher gifts work. Though different from my original vision, I had something to give. Experimenting with materials and techniques turned a difficult situation into a learning experience. As Bean takes these gifts to school, I hope they bring a smile to the teachers’ faces and show our gratitude. Looking ahead, I’m ready to improve these ideas and make even better gifts in the future, thanks to the lessons learned. I’ll definitely make some variation of all these projects again in the future, hopefully with a little more time for planning and design, as in hindsight I’d like to have made the gifts a little more cohesive, but I am absolutely bowled over to have found a way to make the pencil cases for the coming Christmas.