That is a cute idea! I agree that some schools and other workplaces, can make it so hard these days to add personal warmth to a classroom or office. Because so many of my close friends are teachers, I heard early on to avoid anything that says "teacher" on it. My bestfriend had a large box filled with "teacher" ornaments, mugs, suncatchers, etc. Gift cards are much appreciated, though. A heartfelt letter is another special, treasured gift. Along those lines, my friend who's a grade school counselor joked one day years ago, that while teachers are always remembered, she'd only gotten two gifts her entire career. After that, I've always made sure that I gave our own school counselor and my DD's bus driver a small gift at Christmas and at the end of the school year. Lynn

Mona, I made these for my DS's wedding reception-for the Bridal & Parents' tables. If this is for the holiday-you'd use the seasonal flower for that time of year. You buy 2-3 good sized silk blossoms of your choice-per namecard holder. At Michaels-you can buy this stuff called "Petal Porcelain". Simply brush the stuff onto each petal or dip from a dish until covered-then use your finger to 'squeegie' the extra off of each petal. Do this to all 3 blossoms & place on a piece of waxed paper to dry. Petals will be droopy until it sets up-once it does? Take your fingers & re-position the petals to your liking-(just make sure that one of the blossoms-you leave a deep enough 'crevice' towards the front of the outside petals-so you can slip the namecard in there.) Once the 3 have been brushed with the 'porcelain'-butt the 3 together-with 2 of them side by side & the 3rd one (the namecard holder one)-centered behind the two. Let these dry overnight. The actually look like porcelain the next day. You can then paint the edges & centers with an accent color of choice-or paint them a solid color (use acrylic paint). I also did individual leaves as well & placed them here & there on the roses, before the porcelain dried.

I think the best way to go is to use generic holders and make the cards themselves customized to fit the Titanic theme. So, if you already have holders or want to buy some, find something elegant but simple that you can reuse. Then, you print off the luggage tags or boarding pass or whatever. That part is easy. You do all the art on the computer, then print on regular paper with a color printer and cut them out. I've done this sort of thing many times. You can use Word to do it. So, for the tags, you can buy some tan colored card stock, or just print on regular card stock. Then just draw in the shape of the tag, a dark brown ring on the left to simulate the reinforcemnt around the hole, and all the rest of the art on there - the star, the border, the lines to be filled out, etc. Once you have the art the way you like it, copy-paste it as many times as can fit on a page. Then print and cut. Use a hole puncher to punch the hole and attach the string. Admittedly this can be time consuming - it takes time to draw all this on the computer. But it's definitely not difficult and would be so cute.

Saw the cutest idea for placecard holders in a papier mache painting idea book yesterday. They used papier mache birdhouse ornaments (there's me and my birdhouses again)and here's what they did. They removed the ornament strings. Painted them fun, bright colors like bright yellows, pinks, seafoam green and decorated them with polk dots, swirls, zigzag lines etc. Then they curled a piece of decoarative wire to hold the placecard. They polked a small hole in the top of the birdhouse and put the other end of the wire into the roof with a nice bead between the roof and the curl. They used some glue to secure it. Needless to say I ended up buying the book (got it at a big discount at a local craft outlet store) because they also had seasonal stacking box characters including a gingerbread man!