School Supply Basket

So of course the kiddos school has another fundraiser coming up and it's one of my faves! The Annual Basket Bash! So here's the setup each teacher gets a theme and they would like students to bring in objects pertaining to the theme to fill up the basket  Movie theme bring in popcorn and maybe a gift card for tickets, birthday theme candles and maybe cake mix, and so on and so on. It's pretty cute and always has a great variety of items that can be found when the baskets are put together.

Now in addition to the teacher baskets parents are also asked if they would like to make specialty baskets which are raffled off as higher prizes. So hearing this I go right away to the all mighty PINTEREST lol. Looking for fundraising idea I stumbled upon this post by threepugsandababy and was like this is it I'm doing it! So here is her picture of what I got my inspiration from:

Now look at how cute that is!! So you see why I was super excited to try this. First looks easy enough for a semi beginner aka muah and doesn't look like ill need to spend a whole lot on supplies. If you want to do it exactly as above the link will take you to her web page and give you the instructions. Or if you'd rather be like Random Rika and go as you flow then by all means ill continue on to my process lol.

So first thing I did was hit my local craft stores which in my little neck of the woods are AC Moore and Michaels. I originally thought OK gotta find these round box things she is using and of course they are no where to found. So looking around some more I spot these cute heart shape chip board nesting boxes which have 3 in total. Great that will work. But I'm thinking might be a little problem when gluing the supplies to the outside but ill make it work and was only $2! 

Score! 

Next was to get some acrylic paints, as you see above she choose kinda girly spring time colors and I really wanted mine to be open to whoever would like the basket therefore hopefully raising more money for the school. So I chose red, yellow, and blue primary colors and painted the boxes like so. See below:

So after i did that i went on a hunt looking for school supply sales and as luck would have it since Easter was coming up there were a few sales going on for crayola and other brands. So I scored some BOGO half and free deals as well as using my trusty dusty military discount (I ask everywhere for this, you never know!) to get some good deals. I also hit up Walmart's clearance aisle, the Dollar Tree, and Five Below ( which is one of my fave stores to go into). After doing that i went scouting for some cute and fun looking ribbon to tie the whole thing together.

Please excuse the mess in the background! I got caught up in the project and realized i wasnt taking enough pics to explain myself lol. (eh beginner blogger lol) But anywhoo so as you can see I have crayons, chalk, glue sticks, hand sanitizer, markers, glitter glue, kleenex, modeling clay, and more going around the outside of each box and then stacked one on top of the other. On the inside I filled it with the left overs; pencils, pens, book covers, post it notes, tape, erasers, paper clips, a calculater, and dont forget lots of candy! 

Now by filling up those boxes i really didn't take into consideration how heavy this thing was gonna be so I had to scramble around looking for a tray for the bottom. As i looked over my3pugs post above i see she used a cardboard cake bottom....smart girl ;). Well next time i will remember that! lol

Well here is the finished product! In the original she used a box of tissues to decorate the top, well i went and found a cute one that would work with the color scheme but when it came time to use it, it didn't fit. Go figure. So back thru my supplies i start looking again thinking what the heck can i do for the top??? I really didn't want to spend any more money nor did i want do something cheesy like a candle which wouldn't really go with the school theme. So i saw i had a cute little notepad box gift set that i picked up from the dollar tree. I wrapped that in some left over glitter tissue paper and ribbon and glued the remaining glue sticks around the edges to cover the bottom. 

And ta-da! Its all done! Now in actuality the shopping for the basket took me longer that it took for me to put it together but i think that's mostly cause i love to craft shop lol. So my School Supply Basket cost me roughly $50 in supplies but hopefully will help to benefit the school fundraiser!

Thanks for reading my blog!

Random Rika