Name Stick Holder

I stumbled onto this great idea from {Griffith's 3rd Grade Garden}.

I pull names throughout the day for various things. I'm sure that many of you do the same. I used a mug to hold the sticks for the first thirteen years, and I rubber-banded together the sticks for the other class that I saw once a day. This year, my mug wasn't big enough for three classes, so I bought little buckets from THE dollar spot.

They worked fine. They were a little awkward. I probably could have put all three classes into one and just used rubber bands again. Anyway, occasionally I would have an issue with putting a stick down somewhere or having a pile of sticks on my table or sticks falling to the floor.

So this idea is brilliant! You take a stick out of one side, then place it into the side with the lid. When you are out of sticks, switch the lid to the other side and start over. Genius! No more misplaced sticks or stick piles!

Draw a stick from the open side.

Place the drawn stick in the side with the lid.

When all sticks have been drawn, switch the lid to the other side.

Ready to draw names!

Here's how I did mine. I got two of the taller Crystal Light containers and hot-glued them together. You will need the taller size if you use craft sticks like mine. (The pictures with the animal print paper show the smaller size, which I'll have to use for something else...)

Then I trimmed some scrapbook paper to 5 3/4" tall. I ended up using the extra paper to fill a gap on the end because the paper wasn't quite long enough.

I Mod Podged the paper onto the containers and then used a spray-on sealant to reduce the tackiness. I know that the blog where I found this idea just used a ribbon, but sometimes I draw sticks and want to keep it a {secret}. The opaque containers weren't secretive enough, in my opinion. Thus, the scrapbook paper comes into play.

For the lids, I made two different versions since I had two lids. The one on the right has a 1"x1/4" slit in it to fit the larger craft sticks. The one on the left has a starburst cut in the middle. I'll figure out which one I like better. I think that the one on the right is in the lead. The one of the left makes a wood-on-plastic noise when I pass the stick through.

UPDATE: When I cut the slits in the lids, I started by taking my exacto knife (or you could use a pin) and made little dots to outline it. If I just started cutting with the knife, the cut spread like a crack on a windshield. I learned to go slow and make little cuts first. Hope that helps!

Since I glued the two containers together, I made a little notch on the side of the lid so I wouldn't have to worry about getting the lid between the two containers to make it fit. The picture shows the lid before I made the slot in the top. Also, the blogger who was the source of this idea also wrote something on the lid so she would know which side was which. I think it's fine without it.

I made three, one for each class. I will use my new Silhouette Portrait (when the hard drive on my laptop has been recovered) to put a label on each of the wider sides, but I can't decide if I'm going to put on a number for the hour I have the class or the initial of the class's homeroom teacher. I'm trying to decide which would be more constant from year-to-year. Probably the homeroom teacher's initial.