Tag Archives: bulletin board

Autumn Fires

Leave a reply

For the third bulletin board, I went with this only tangentially related poem from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Children’s Garden of Verses, which I think is delightful, although it is probably not the least bit relevant to children in Arizona in 2026: it’s far too hot for bonfires, summer isn’t pleasant and it isn’t really over, and we have plenty of flowers in the fall and even in the winter. Our seasons are less defined and less predictable than anything a Scottish poet in the 19th century could have imagined.

But it’s a catchy little piece.

To save time, I used markers instead of cutting the letters from paper. I tried to make the letters look kind of fiery and it seems to have succeeded. Not sure about the smoke. People seem astonished about me writing freehand but it’s so much easier than cutting. These were pretty good markers—they have to be to draw on black paper.

.

Autumn Desert Flowers II: Tansy Aster

Leave a reply

The colors of butcher paper stocked by my school change occasionally, but this beautiful lavender has never come up before. I was so excited to see it, and I knew that I would have to make this tansy aster, a common wildflower in southern Arizona. So even though I didn’t start with a theme, a theme emerged. Sort of.

After finishing both flowers I thought it would be fun to give them both little interpretive signs like it was a botanical garden. I chose the name most commonly used here in Tucson, another common name, and the scientific name (this one is Machaeranthera tanacetifolia) and I used paint pens for the lettering to save time.

I’ll save back a few feet of lavender paper for the future. No doubt, when this roll is gone, it won’t come up again for a decade or so.

Autumn Desert Flowers I: Mexican Bird of Paradise

Leave a reply

Creating 3 bulletin boards that all matched was starting to feel kind of burdensome, and it occurred to me that the bulletin boards don’t all have to go together, so instead of starting with a grand theme, I decided to start with one idea. This is the Mexican Bird of Paradise (Latin name Caesalpinia pulcherrima) aka the Peacock Flower (aka a lot of other things). It’s a ubiquitous ornamental here in southern Arizona, but it seems to be native to the Caribbean, and is specifically associated with the Barbados, but also with Suriname. I couldn’t find a definitive place of origin, but I didn’t look very hard either.

Anyway, they’re very showy and stunning, very complex blossoms. The flowers begin to bloom from the bottom of the pyramid of buds and as each layer shrivels a new layer opens.

This image already seems to resonate with its audience. There are 2 Mexican Bird of Paradise bushes in the courtyard where the bulletin boards hang, and most of the kids figured it out. The actual flowers are less than an inch wide; these paper simulacra are probably 20 times larger than life.

Back to School 2026–27: Best Year Ever III

Leave a reply

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.

Back to School 2026–27: Best Year Ever Part II

Leave a reply

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.

Back to School 2026–27: Best Year Ever Part I

Leave a reply

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.

A Different Green III

Leave a reply

So obviously I had to go beyond my normal sources to get this many different greens. Fortunately, I knew where to go and had many different options available. In the end I think it was something like 15 different kinds of paper: butcher paper, printer paper, construction paper, origami paper, tissue paper, and specialty paper.

The attribution to JRR Tolkien was actually yellow paper but I did the lettering in 2 green marker outlined with green pen and then colored the rest of the paper with a different green marker.

Even though I was just going for strips of green, a lot of people saw a forest in this design. One person even specifically suggested a birch forest.

All 3 of these bulletin boards took about 14 hours.

A Different Green II

Leave a reply

I’m just posting these all at once so they don’t slip my mind again, because I actually finished them Friday and now it’s Monday. So this is part two of the verse.

This panel was in fact the second one I did, and it was fun cutting a million trees and tearing up paper for the river, at first. After a while it got onerous and I had to throw away so many pieces I messed up. I couldn’t help but think of the giant mallorn trees, but this forest was supposed to be about GREEN and in any case what I saw in my mind’s eye was pine.

A Different Green I

Leave a reply

I recently reread Lord of the Rings, which I think is more relevant now than it’s ever been, being a tale of unlikely heroes compelled by honor and duty to do the right thing in the face of certain death. Like every single character knows their enterprise is doomed to fail but they march grimly toward their own putative demise because that’s what you do when evil threatens to overwhelm your world.

But they have some nice moments mixed in with the doom, like Lothlórien, where the grass is festooned with the golden, star shaped elanor flowers and the white, snowdrop niphredil.

Even though this panel is the first of three, I did the image last.. The flowers and letters are cut paper but the stems and leaves are markers. The font is based on Aniron.

The quote is from a poem of Bilbo Baggins sings to Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring, an old hobbit wistful with nostalgia, watching a young hobbit prepare to make a journey beyond any he can imagine.

Seasonal Coziness Chimineas I

Leave a reply

This is probably the latest winter holiday bulletin board I ever did: Friday is the last day of school and I just got it up yesterday. I’m not thrilled with the fact that the flags are just suspended in space but I needed to be done. I spent a lot of hours on it but I never have enough time.

But this is a very Tucson kind of scene. I love that chiminea on the left and wish it were real and in my back yard.

I noticed the kinders all putting their hands up to the fires like they were trying to warm up. I must add that, even though it was cold when I had this idea, it was 82° when I finished and the kinders were pretending to warm their hands by the fire. That’s Tucson for you.

I’ll post more chimineas tomorrow. The third bulletin board just says “STAY WARM” in big letters. I probably won’t post it at all because it’s not that interesting.