School Supply Cake

This year I had a student teacher for the first time ever. I really enjoyed having her in my class, so to show my appreciation for all of her work, I made a school supply cake. My inspiration came from several pins on Pinterest like this one, this one, and this one. Of course I modified them to fit what I had and what I thought would be most useful to a first year teacher. Every piece of it is reusable and it can be taken apart very easily. I ended up using:

*1 box of tissues
*1 container of disinfecting wipes
*1 container of misc. office supplies (paper clips, binder clips, and push pins)
*2 packs of pencils (24 count)
*11 packs of 8-count crayons (you could always use 24 count)
*1 pack of 10 markers
*3 sharpie markers
*1 pack of Expo markers (4)
*1 small post-it cube
*1 rubber band ball
*1 package small binder clips
*1 small stapler (also came with staple remover)
*1 hole punch
*4 glue sticks
*1 ink pad with 2 stamps
*1 package of 4 small sticker rolls
*1 wooden apple pointer
*1 pack bulletin board boarder
*2" red ribbon
*1" ABC ribbon


I started with these as my bases:

Around the tissue box, I put the packs of crayons. To get them to stick, I wrapped a piece of packing tape around the box with the sticky side facing out.

I used glue sticks on the ends because the box wasn't quite wide enough for two packs on each side. This fit pretty well. I also ended up putting three more boxes of crayons laying flat across the top of the box.

For the next layer I again used tape sticky side facing out, but this time I used two strips, one across the top and one across the bottom. I taped the pencils going all the way around- I ended up with two extra pencils out of the two packs.

For the next layer, I did the same thing around the office supply set, using markers. I added the rubber band ball and the post-it note cube on top of that. I secured the layers together with a packing tape "pillow". Around the bottom of each layer, I wrapped the boarder. I didn't cut it, just overlapped it, and used binder clips to seure it so it can still be used. 

I added some extra supplies around the cake, like the hole punch:

...the pointer with the rolls of stickers slid on it...

...the stapler, ink pad, and stamps...

...and finally the staple remover and the binder clips (going all the way around the border).

To finish it off I added ribbon across the middle of the pencils...ta da!

I think it's super cute and I'm excited to give it to my student teacher tomorrow. Next time I do one I'll have to make sure the pencils are a little straighter (it kind bothers me that they're crooked, but not enough to redo them!) and maybe come up with a middle layer that is wider or a top layer that is skinnier so there is more diffeence between the pencls and the markers. Overall, I think it was pretty successful for my first attempt!