Personalized Hand Soap Dispenser (Teacher Gift)

I'll admit, I stole this idea from Pinterest, but I just had to share. This project turned out to be so simple, inexpensive and cute. You start out with the Softsoap(r) brand hand soap which is about $1-$2 (the lighter colored soaps work best so that the design shows through...pink, green, peach, yellow).

You need to remove the front and back labels from the bottle and use Goo Gone to remove the sticky residue.

To make the personalized label insert, I used the template from this blog (which is where the original project idea came from) and added a picture of Hayes in black & white and his name at the bottom. Is used a photo editing program called Picasa to edit Hayes' picture to look like a black & white sketch. You could use anything for the picture...on the original blog, she used a silhouette of her children and also recommended using a picture that the child had drawn. Other ideas would be a monogram or any type of clip art. I had to glue the picture and name on the template after it was printed out because I was unable to edit the template which was in Adobe Acrobat (I'm sure it's possible to edit it on the computer, but I'm not savvy enough to figure it out).

I took the template page with my additions to Office Max, and they made a copy of it on a transparency for about 75 cents.

Next, you cut out the rectangle template (not on transparency), open the top of the soap, roll the transparency section slightly so that it fits in the top, and insert it. You can use the tube on the soap dispenser to make sure it is aligned correctly.

Now you're basically done, just add any personal additions like a tag with a note and/or ribbon. This would be a great idea for any kind of gift, for parties or showers. Here's how mine turned out (the words say "You are an Awesome Teacher. From, Hayes):

The transparency is the perfect size to sit in the soap container and remain centered. It just "floats" there.

The finished product with tag and ribbon