Ready to Rock First Grade

Hard to believe summer's over and the kids are already back in school! To cheer our granddaughter on as she returned to class, we sent her a few of her favorite twirl dresses together with this card and pencil shaped treat box.
 

I was first introduced to Pete the Cat by our granddaughter last year while she was a kindergartener just learning to read. Apparently she and her classmates became quite attached to Pete the Cat, as they read and were read to, quite a few Pete the Cat books. They even had a Pete the Cat stuffie in their classroom which the kids took turns taking home on weekends. 

I suppose Pete the Cat has now taken the place of Dr. Seuss' "Cat in the Hat" that we all loved and grew up with?  I found a couple coloring book images of this blue cat named "Pete" and used Make the Cut design program to render them into cutting files for my card.

On the inside, I installed two Karen Burniston's Spinner Square Pop Up mechanisms to create a fun double spinner card.  

As the card is opened, the mechanism on the top swings the rectangular panel with the word "First" upwards, while the mechanism on the bottom swings the panel with the word "Grade" down.

I decorated the square panels in front of the spinner mechanisms with "school stuff". The little blackboard was created using rectangular shapes together with DJ Doodlers Crayon and Comic Sans fonts. Cutting files for the pencil and scissors are from "Back To School Owls" set from Marjorie Ann Designs. Books and apple were die cut from Karen Burniston's Bookworm die set.

I also added a paper pieced Pete the Cat reading a book created from a coloring page image. Just for fun I added a tiny Pete the Cat image to the cover of the book using the Make the Cut print and cut feature.

I used Memo font and red mylar sticker paper to personalize this oversized pencil treat box. There are several templates for similar pencil shaped boxes on different websites to select from but I chose to use this one by My Paper Cute on Etsy because of it's unique flip top lid.  The box assembly was pretty easy once I watched the assembly video tutorial linked with the template purchase. I enlarged the template to as large as I could to fit onto my 12x12  cutting mat to be sure the 8 packets of Strawberry Cream Dipped Poky Biscuit Sticks I wanted to send for our granddaughter's after school snack would fit inside. Pretty sure I'll be making more of these cute boxes in the future... I think they might also work well at the end of the school year as a gift card holder thank you gifts for teachers.