I’m a teacher – I decided to surprise my students’ mums with a cute Mother’s Day gift but it was a TOTAL fail

THOSE who work in childcare or the education system will know how difficult it is to come up with new, creative ideas for Mother’s Day surprises.

Determined to think outside the box and not make yet another card or macaroni necklace, one teacher turned to TikTok to seek inspiration – however, things didn’t quite go to plan.

Gina Mara, from California, was scrolling on social media when she stumbled upon a crafty DIY hack, which she thought would be perfect for her first graders – shrink charms.

The craft, as demonstrated by another TikTok user, (@justhearsingaround), was meant to be relatively simple and required only two ingredients – a plastic sheet (she used the bottom of a transparent container) and some acrylic paint.

According to Just Hearsing Around, one only needs to apply some acrylic paint on a child’s hand and press it onto the sheet before cutting it around and baking the handprints in the oven at 160C for five minutes.

But whilst for the mum the charms came out adorable, Gina’s attempt didn’t got that well, as she took it to TikTok to share the major fail.

At the start of the viral DIY blunder – it’s been viewed close to 712,000 times on social media – the teacher showed footage of the process, as a co-worked was applying a light layer of pink paint on a student’s palm.

Covered in blue and pink handprints, Gina and her colleagues had made a total of 21 shrink charms, which were ready to be popped in the oven once fully dry.

”The kids were so excited!” the teacher wrote.

However, despite the hard work, the DIY craft turned out to be a major fail, as the heat made the plastic curl up into weird shapes.

”Now how do I explain this BS to them?” Gina was mortified.

While she did claim to have followed the directions step by step, viewers were convinced she must’ve made a mistake at some point.

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”you didn’t cook them long enough. I hate when people complain when it’s their own fault,” one critical user commented.

Another agreed, wondering: ”Question… why would you not experiment first before jumping into a whole class worth with no experience on how to make them?”

A less harsh person tried to share a solution: ”just tell them that you need to do it again for it to work, like it’s part of the steps, they won’t know. then redo it and cook em longer [sic].”

Someone else appeared to have an issue with the choice of colours Gina had picked for the craft: ”bruh why blue and pink don’t teach them like that” – a comment that was liked by almost 1,400 other viewers.

Despite the fail, Gina hasn’t stopped trying out various hacks – for Christmas, she made stunning DIY decorations using plastic cups.

This turned out to be a win and a favourite for many.