Some customers thought that if they upload their own design then they needed to pay a custom logo fee. I have since, added a description of the custom logo option, as well as changed how the custom logo option is referred to in the line item.

In addition, recently someone ordered a bencher with an existing border design but asked whether it would be possible to add another design from our design options above the text. You can find the new combined design in the cover design section in the Birkat Chaverim shop.

And this one by another girl as a travel notebook with pencil holder:

Another type of notebook cover was made by a student as a siddur cover and I posted a photo of it in this post.

Other ideas for back to school crafts are pencil toppers. There are so many possibilities, if we make some I’ll post some pictures.

Our version has added features. First an aplix (meaning velcro) closure so that you can decide what type of filling you want and remove it whenever you want. We have on occasion used freeze pops inside.The aplix is recycled. It came on a US box mailbag and would have otherwise been thrown out. Its strong enough so that the younger set (say around age three) can’t open it and make a mess.

Additional added features are the cloth “button” eyes, embroidered features, a ribbon color (chosen by my daughter,) and a tail that matches the button eyes.

This is a great project for Bar/Bat Mitzvahs in particular if there is a theme related to visiting the sick, the story of Abraham and the three angels, or fundraising for a children’s hospital. These could be made both for participants and to donate to a hospital.

Summer is a good time to post these two projects made by two girls in my class. First is a water scene made out of plastic bags and fimo. I thought it was really neat. She tested what happens when you iron plastic bags a little too long and then made use of the piece as the ocean. She didn’t have to. You can actually iron other pieces together but she liked the effect. The fimo was shaped using a mold I bought that made sea animal shapes.

This project is based on a project in Disney’s Family Fun Magazine. I have a few copies at home for the girls to skim to get ideas (along with other props.) This participant decided she liked the idea and so brought an old shirt from home in order to make it. Its great to tote things back and forth to the beach or pool. It would also be an easy craft idea to do at a Bat/Bar Mitzvah celebration.

Korean Board game The post on crafty crow uses craft sticks, rocks and a drawn board game to make this, but I imagine that in a pinch one could find things to make this even while traveling. Its a bit like Sorry.

Picaria A strategy game sort of like Tic Tac Toe but more complicated. Its a Native American game

Last year I hunted down lots of bingo, scavenger hunts, coloring sheets and mazes for a family trip with multi aged children. One thing we didn’t end up including in all those games were dot to dots. As a kid, I really liked doing and designing dot to dots- I used to like making them for my friends. I found a source for complicated ones and simple ones. The first site has dot to dots that change weekly based on ones syndicated in newspapers.

I asked all the parents to send a photo of their child and a quote “What is your favorite thing about gan?” Its a good thing I asked for this a few weeks in advanced, because the main gannenet (pre-school teacher) asked for quotes for the other gannenot and it might have been difficult to get the materials we needed given the additional requests.

My plan was to make accordion books from the pictures, quotes and some pictures I had collected from a few of the children in the gan. I printed out the pictures and text, and assembled the books using cardboard, ribbon, and sections from the children’s pictures. I hand wrote “What is your favorite thing about gan?” on the four of the children’s drawings (not so easy on crayon!) to use for the cover. I did a layout where two pages (one on the front of the accordion and one on the back) included the children’s quotes. Each child had a page of their own (except in the case where there were two children in one picture.) The last page says “Thank you for helping us grow!”

Accordion books are forgiving if not folded or cut exactly to measurement:

Pictures are blurred to protect the privacy of the children and their families. The main difficulty in the project was a blunt knife for cutting the pages to the correct size and protecting the books from my daughter who wanted to be in charge of them.

We basically cut rectangles out of a cereal box (ordinarily I would have used a papercutter but i lent mine to someone) and cut slots on each side. My daughter participated in some of the cutting. She mostly enjoyed decorating the cards and the matchbox. She probably spent an hour deciding on the colors to use, lining them up, decorating the matchbox and placing them inside the box. We then put a small hole in the matchbox in order to add a keychain. We made two in the end. We also used craft punches for variation on some of the cards:

We have been making travel games over the last few weeks in our chug/classes. The idea was that almost all the girls are going away somewhere once school is out and all of the “somewhere” require traveling. Having some travel games would make the traveling part of the trip more fun. For inspiration I pulled out a HABA game I bought my daughter a while back (see image.) I also pulled out three books that I thought might be useful for ideas:
Steven Caney’s Toy Book
Folk Toys Around the World and how to Make Them (Joan Joseph)
Sefer Hamischagim (Holiday Games Tamar Talshier)
The result of that was several games- here’s what we started with:
A miniature version of the game squeeky (I don’t really know much about the game, it involves trying to keep the cats from eating the mice and helping the mice eat the cheese, as far as I can tell.)
Boardgames
We made up a few games to play on planes and such. One was a fabric board and a bag to hold all the pieces. Another was a cardboard game with game pieces stuck down with velcro and we came up with a variety of rules for the game:
Look for the most outrageous shoes
who is the tallest passenger/person
the funniest T-shirt
Go back three steps
Go one step forward
loose a turn
return to start
find three people reading books and figure out which book was written first
find five people listening to music
what is the closest person who is drinking, drinking
how many people in the next seat section (or your section) are sleeping
find four people wearing orange/pink/yellow and tell about what they are wearing
find two sleeping babies
find someone with hazel eyes
I’ll try and post photos in another post.