Show off your best crafts for the start of school or kindergarten here

Dear community,
In this thread, you can share your best crafts for the start of school or the start of kindergarten. Please upload only your own photos.
You can find the corresponding promotional thread for these topics here.

My grandson’s daycare has asked parents to make a school cone for their child out of a sheet of A2-sized cardboard. The daycare then plans to give these to the children, filled with treats, as a farewell gift. But since the parents are busy with the “real school cone” for the first day of school and preparing for the accompanying celebration, the daycare assignment ended up falling to me.

Since my grandson (as an alternative to Ninjago warriors) is still into dinosaurs, I designed it accordingly. It definitely wasn’t supposed to be cute. I hope the dinosaurs are creepy enough—I couldn’t bring myself to make them any scarier.

Best regards, Ina





 

And then I got another project… At the parent-teacher meeting, the school handed out wooden index card boxes to the parents of first-graders. Each child will use it to collect their index cards for studying throughout the year. The box was supposed to be personalized and labeled with the child’s name.



The box is made of raw wood. You can probably imagine what it would look like in a short time—or even over the course of a year—if it weren’t properly protected.

I sanded the entire box with sandpaper. I had to spend a long time working on the sliding lid in particular to make it slide smoothly.

After sanding, I painted the outside several times with metallic acrylic paints (water-based): the lid gold, the box sea blue and May green. My grandson chose the colors. Inside, I just sanded and waxed it.

Then I wrote the owner’s name on all sides with a black permanent marker. Finally, I rubbed food-safe furniture wax into all sides and polished them. This made the writing stand out even more clearly and gave the surfaces a pleasant feel.

My grandson loves it—what more could you want?

Best regards, Ina

WOW, Ina, you’re really talented at making such great things—the school cone is beautiful, and the box is really nice, too :-)

Hugs, Inge

Wow—your grandson is so lucky to have such a creative grandma!

These turned out really great! And yes, that’s a pretty spooky bag—he’ll love it.

My granddaughter was set to start school last year and had picked out a dolphin-patterned backpack in the spring. A few weeks later, while browsing Makerist, I came across patterns for this school cone. After a quick check with my daughter and granddaughter, the project was approved. The great thing about this “school cone” is that it has a zipper for the cardboard cone. The cardboard cone is later removed and replaced with a stuffing pad, giving the school cone a second life as a stuffed animal. The child got to choose the colors. You can get the pattern and sewing pattern from “kits 4 kids,” which also offers other great designs. However, I used a simple cardboard school cone that already had a built-in closure. You can sew the stuffing pillow yourself or buy it ready-made.

Wow, you’ve all been so creative again, and the results are amazing.
That spooky school cone is a hit, but this pretty wooden box is a real showstopper. Great job, Ina.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any school-age kids anymore.

Best regards

Angie, that’s such a great idea!

It wasn’t my idea 😏—it was Tina from kits4kids. But I thought it was a great idea too, and my granddaughter was thrilled with her special back-to-school goodie bag. 😊

My boys also love sewn school gift bags that can be used as pillows later on. For my oldest, I’d made one out of cardboard. Three years later, I made a sewn one for my youngest, and my oldest was so sad because his was just gathering dust. So I sewed him a new one. Now they’ve been on their beds for years.

I absolutely love your sewn school gift bags—both the dolphin-shaped ones by Angie and the others by Sara! It’s also a brilliant idea that they can be used as pillows later on. This way, we’re all creating lasting memories for the kids.

The old cardboard school gift bags were eventually thrown away anyway, since they’d served their purpose and had no further practical use.

Best regards, Ina

For me, it was the school cone for the first day of school.

Sewn with my grandson’s chosen design

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I think it’s great that back-to-school gift bags are later turned into stuffed animals or pillows—first of all, it’s a lovely memento of this special day, and second, it’s such a shame to let such beautifully made gift bags go to waste once they’re no longer needed.