A scrapping money box tutorial and a celebratory canvas

How do you do pocket money in your family?

In ours, the girls get $5 every fortnight BUT $2 of that is enforced budgeting. It is put aside as "present money". That may seem a strange thing to budget for but I don't see the point of saying "Okay kids, it's my birthday coming up, here's $20 of my money to go and buy me a present."

Also, I'm all for teaching that it's the thought that counts and they don't have to spend a lot of money to show they care. Otherwise they'd have grandiose ideas for what they'd want to buy and expect Mitch and I to fork out for it. This way they might have $5 saved up and they'd have see what they could buy for the amount they have, rather than the other way around. When I was a kid, our pocket money was pitiful (sorry, Mum and Dad, put it's true). We got whatever grade we were in at school, times by 10c per fortnight. So in Grade 5 I'd get 50c etc.

BUT however this was a good thing. We learned that it wasn't about the excellent presents that you gave or recieved, it was learning about the good feeling that you got when you gave someone something, anything, and also about recieving, when you knew that a sibling sacrificed their whole fortnight's pay to buy you that packet of Fruit Tingles (a favourite present of mine, you got more in the packet than in a packet of lifesavers AND it was 3c cheaper - see I put a lot of thought into it - and, okay, I admit I still have those frugal tendancies :D).

Anyway back to the topic at hand. Ella had 2 piggy banks, by way of birthday presents, in which to divide and store her money. Rosie, however, had none, and couldn't see why I said "no" to buying her some really cute ones for "only" $20 that she had seen.

When I found these empty cream of tartar containers in the pantry, the potential straight away hit me, although Rosie was horrified by the idea of using these as money boxes. But of course I intended to do some prettying-up first.

I got out my stash of scrapbooking paper and odds and ends that don't see the light of day often enough, and with instructions that the boxes had to have purple on them, chose some of this for my equipment.

First I traced around the container as I rolled it along, to get the size,

and cut out a pice of floral paper which I glued on with craft PVA. Using the first piece for a template, I cut out a piece of spotty paper and likewise glued it on, overlapping the first. On the two different containers, I swapped the order in which they were positioned.

I then proceeded to decorate them using a torn paper strip and purple ribbon which was actually the hanger straps from a new shirt I bought yesterday.

I used 'S' stickers on one for 'Spending'

and on the other I cut out some plastic 'Ps' for 'Present'.

The plastic was from some tags that a parent had donated a whole boxful of for collage and I'd kept a few as I knew they'd come in handy one day. I then painted over all of the paper with more glue to help preserve it and cut a coin hole in the plastic top.

Rosie is very happy with them.

(And there's another successful lesson in 'make-do with what you have'.)

Also this week, I was asked to paint a canvas for a colleague's 21st birthday party as a momento which everyone could sign. I had previosly done one for another colleague's bridal shower, which had their initials entwined with vines and "May your love bloom and grow forever" in the center. As Amy is a shoe afficiado of course I had to put one on, which just happened to look like Cinderellas shoe so I gave the whole canvas a fairytale theme.

Here's some details.

She loved it even though everyone unfortunately signed on the front instead of the back. (It was designed to have that choice, but I personally wouldn't want to have a picture hanging on my wall that everyone's scrawled over.) I've now got an order for a friend's 25th wedding anniversary celebration which is coming up, and someone else has expressed interest so I might have a little side business in the works.