I had fun making these fat crayons.
Obviously, this was not my most creative or rigorous set of boards. I didn’t have a lot of motivation, and it was so incredibly hot and sticky that I did not want to be working outside. But everyone said they loved them.
The only thing I really have to add Is that I decided to go with red decorative elements, because when I just put up the letters on the first bulletin board, I realized I inadvertently recreated the Best Buy logo.
This one actually blew off the night before the first one blew off. And it’s the ugliest (oldest) corkboard and the one that most requires covering.
I came in the day after finishing it, and noticed right away that it wasn’t there, and crossed my fingers that someone had found it, because I didn’t see it in the courtyard. In the past, I have a few times found my blown away bulletin board in the courtyard, and a few times other people have found it and brought it in, and one time it blew away completely and was never seen again. That was sad.
So I was happy to see that it was laid out in the library, because the librarian had found it. I went to examine it more closely, to see if there was any damage, and the first thing I noticed was that there was a very healthy wolf spider just chilling between two layers of paper.
I casually mention, “Hey, here’s a big spider, here” and the librarian says something like, “I’m usually OK with spiders” in a voice that frankly did not convince me she was OK with spiders. So she comes over and sees it and adds, “I DIDN’T THINK YOU MEANT THAT BIG! I THOUGHT YOU MEANT A DADDY LONG LEGS! WHAT DO WE DO?”
I say, I’m going to take it outside, and she says, “HOW? WHERE?” And I say, “I’m going to catch it in a cup and then release it in the Mexican Bird of Paradise.” (I thought: cool spider should live in a cool bush).
So I scoop this little monster to and take it to the cool plant and the spider is like OMG YES I LOVE THIS PLANT and JUMPED out of the cup to get to the plant. So I’m like, have a nice life, then, and I go back in the library and the librarian says, “So I brought that spider inside? And it was in here with me ALL MORNING???”
Hopefully the trauma subsides.
Anyway, I hung it back up and continued decorating.
Yes, it’s that time of year again! The time of year when the monsoon winds blow so hard they tear my work off the wall before anyone even sees it 😭. This was the worst year yet. This photograph was actually taken before the whole board got ripped up by a weather system that apparently caused tornados in southeastern Arizona, a region of the world absolutely not know for the presence of tornadoes.
I spent 4 days on these 3 boards. I lost some time on the first time because they surprised me with MY OWN BOOKCASE in the library. Granted, I think the librarian was just tired of my stuff being stashed everywhere behind the circulation desk, but it was a very nice gift. After 21+ years, I actually have a space that isn’t “jammed under the circulation desk.” Anyway, I spent a while moving my stuff—all my book repair supplies, all my writing club materials, and all my art supplies—to this new space. It took a while.
The second bulletin board had already blown off (I’ll tell that story in the next post) and I had actually reinforced everything before I left Wednesday (the day before school started). Thursday, I was taking an early morning walk (really the only kind of walk you can realistically take in Tucson in the summer) when the librarian texted me a picture of my SHREDDED work.
i texted back that I was 1 minute away from the school and would be in to fix it before realizing that I was wearing a VERY GAY (like, literally advertising a queer event) off the shoulder shirt and no bra, and then quickly texted that it would actually be 20 minutes, because I had to go home and don some more appropriate attire.
I did manage to get it all buttoned up before the bell rang but it’s kind of sad looking, all stapled and taped and patched. Not an auspicious start to the best year ever.
If you can believe it, school starts Monday.
I can’t quite believe it but I decided to act like I did and get the breezeway ready. Originally I intended to come back today (Thursday) but then in Monday I decided I didn’t want to be rushed, and good thing, too. Because it turned out that not only would I be decorating all 3 bulletin boards in the breezeway again, they also wanted me to do the one by the principal’s office.
I didn’t have any huge inspiration but I decided I wanted to make a hibiscus and then it just made sense to go along with that theme. Which is hilarious because the breezeway is, of course, in the Sonoran Desert. But it’s frankly as humid as a tropical rain forest this week. So that’s cool.
I could have made MORE FLOWERS or made the flowers fancier or added smaller leaves or other design elements, but I had to go feed the Bear’s cat and then I had to give Miss Kitty a yoga lesson and ALSO I still have a whole day of work on that fourth board tomorrow. A dragon’s gotta pace dragonself.
The lettering is based on the De Latto font. The leaves are monsteras.
It’s a bit pared down but my hands are still in recovery mode from the feigned glass windows (ultimately a ~30-hour job) and also it was 108° outside, the breezeway, where this bulletin board hangs. I use metallic paint pens rather than staples, because it’s easier and that cork is getting destroyed.
it’s the back of a lion. The Lineweaver Lions go back to school Thursday, and I drew a lion’s back. That is the whole gimmick.
i also knocked together another simple design so there wouldn’t be an empty bulletin board right at the beginning of the tour on parents’ night, which I’ll put in a separate post.
My district is going back to in-person learning after their spring break (which is this week) and the front office staff asked me to work my magic on the front window. (With social distancing, temperature checks, and hand sanitizing, I’m guessing there’s going to be a bit of a bottleneck there in the mornings.) Since I was also making my own back-to-school/spring bulletin board, and this week was break, I really had to jam.
This is the biggest piece I’ve done to date. It’s about 170 cm wide by 180 cm high, which is bigger than me in both directions. It took three people to hang (haven’t figured out how to get a good photograph from outside because it’s behind a glass window and there’s a glare). My head was in all kind of places all week and I was constantly miscounting and mismeasuring things (anybody need a heraldic lion? ‘Cause I have extra) plus I really just slapped all that lettering together in record time and those rainbow bullseyes should have been much more complex mandalas and I’m still quite satisfied with it. The front office staff loved it and the principal thanked me too.
“Launching” and “stellar” are probably big vocabulary words for a sizable portion of my intended audience, but they’re coming to learn, right?
I’m on a roll with these retro rocket ships!
When I first started doing bulletin boards I never wanted for inspiration; there was always some big idea that I couldn’t wait to try, but now that I’ve been at it 9 years (NINE YEARS!) (averaging 5 or 6 a year, so let’s say about 50 total) and I hate the idea of repeating myself, at least in the same forum, sometimes I have to reach a bit for new material.
The school where I volunteer starts up Thursday, so I had to cram this into my schedule (Tuesday night was the big back-to-school, sign-up-for-the-PTA, eat popcorn and wander around the campus open house, and I managed to get the bulk of the work finished before the school was deluged with parents and kids) not knowing what the plan was, but once I got there I remembered how much fun I had drawing the retro rocket for my “The Future is Non Binary and Intersectional” T-shirt, and once I had that idea, the rest of it fell into place. The rocket and the lion cubs and the paw print and the flames were easy to design: a lot of these elements were ones I had worked with before and the Girl helped me on the first day. She’s really good at peeling excess rubber cement off things.
Then I went back the next day and did the lettering. Something was clearly disconnected in my brain because I measured the space available, calculated how big each letter could be, and then completely disregarded my own calculations and made each letter about 5 centimeters too wide. Thus the bizarre/organic spacing. My original plan was to cut out some of the text that ended up in the word bubble, but the families were already there and it’s a lot of letters that wouldn’t have fit anyway and I decided to just hand ink it and slap it on as a word balloon, which took 5 minutes, versus the 2 hours sketching and cutting would have taken.
The principal loved it. All the teachers loved it. Someone called me “faithful.” As I was leaving the school, I saw a parent taking a photo of my bulletin board! Also a kid trying to read it out loud who clearly didn’t know the words “launching” or “stellar.” Success!
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