DIY Mothers Day gift from children- $1

DIY Mothers Day Gift - $1

This is my first Mothers Day without my mom.  I spoke with That Guy and explained that I will work with our kids on gifts for his mom, and with my daycare children on gifts for their moms, but that he would have to come up with and execute a gift idea for his mom himself. (Usually I take care of all of that on his behalf, but he understood).

Today I will blog about the gift the daycare children have made for their mothers.  ***SPOILER ALERT- If you are one of my daycare parents you may want to wait to read this post until after the weekend*** And tomorrow I will write a quick post about the gift Walter is making for his Nana.

I love doing crafts with my daycare kids. When we craft gifts for events (birthdays, mothers day/fathers day, Christmas ect) its important to me that they are gifts and not just crafts. As in, something they could actually use, over tissue paper flowers (for example) which are lovely and sentimental but don't get much real use.

So we made nail polish washer necklaces.

That Guy ran down to the local home improvement store for me and picked up some inexpensive metal washers. He got three sizes with the largest size being the most expensive at 34 cents each.  Since each necklace uses two or three washers we are looking at a total cost output here of roughly $1 each.

The first step is to wash the washers (hehe).  They often have a thin layer of grease or oil on them from the manufacturing process. Dry them well after.

Dry your washers well after washing

Next, outside (preferred) or in a well ventilated area pull out your collection of nail polish.  This project will use a noticeable portion of your bottle so you might not want to use really expensive nail polish for this project.  Fortunately for me, I only have pretty inexpensive stuff anyways.

Just paint your washers! The kids all chose their own colours.  Some kids really stuck with it and waited while coat after coat dried.  Others were gone after two coats, so I helped touch it up for them.  
If you have a light colour polish, be generous with the applicator brush- try almost "flooding" the washer with the colour.

One of the little ones painting away

Painting for Mommy

As mentioned you will have to let it dry.  Overnight is ideal but just a few hours of dry time will make it fine for handling.

Nice painting, kids!

I used a white french manicure polish marker to write the childrens names on the back of the washers, so none would get mixed up. You could also use the marker (or nail polish with a fine tipped brush) to add designs like stripes or dots to some of your washers.

Marked with their names

Stack your washers two or three high.

Stack 'em

Then the child chose the colour ribbon which would turn this from metal washers into an adorable necklace. Cut a length and don't forget to heat seal the edges of the ribbon with a lit match to keep the ribbon from fraying.    Fold your length of ribbon in half, and using the folded edge put it through the center of all three washers from the back to the front.

adding ribbon

Slide in the raw edges and pull

adding ribbon

Taa-daa!! Adorable necklace for Mom!!!

Taa-daa!

Look how pretty they all are!!