Michaels Create 2 Educate Project

Top of the morning ( well...technically it is mid-afternoon right now, but on a Sunday this is morning to me okaaaaayyy? Great!)! I just wanted to share how to create the Sailor of the Month frame I made for my student of the month. Now, a little funny background story first. I have MAD O.C.D throughout the month of mid July-early August before school starts. Usually it is regular O.C.D, but then the weeks before school starts I am in my CRAZY/MAD mode trying to figure everything out.

I have sketchbooks of my classroom and how I want each board to look like, where tables should be placed, and etc.... Can you tell that I am a visual learner? Wellpz.... while doing this process, I drew a sketch of the closet room door in my classroom. I have been blessed this year with my own walk-in closet with shelves where I get to store all of my junk classroom belongings. It even comes with a Master lock (now that's some serious stuff right there!). Anyways, the door is an old wooden door (very ugly). I was thinking, how can I make this a little less ugly? Then, voila! Inspiration hit me and I decided to go to Michaels (2 miles away from my new school, by the way) and get me some crafting materials. Luckily, I procrastinated on making this project and happened to see a bunch of teacher bloggers post about the Michaels #create2educate sweepstakes the following week. Because of this, I was able to take before pics of the products I bought along with my final finished product.

And without further ado....

Sailor of the Month Board

It came out just how I envisioned and sketched it out on my sketchbook. I have seen people on Etsy sell shadowboxes where they had a piece of twine in the middle and pictures throughout the twine hanging my tiny little clothespin. 

Now...on to the materials you will be needing:

• 1 shadowbox frame 
• a few sponge tipped paintbrushes
• 3 different shaped wooden decorative banners
• 1 hello wooden decorative thought bubble
• wooden decorative camera package (on sale for 99 cents)
• a package of pinwheel toothpicks (on sale for 99 cents)
• a pack of instagram picture framers (on sale for 99 cents)
• a pack of wooden letters (or more depending on what you are trying to spell, but if you look at the back it tells you how many of each letter each pack comes with)
• a pack of clothespin
• primary colors of acrylic paint (red, blue, yellow, white)
• some washi tape
• twine 
• a few push pins
• 2 straws (I was a cheapo and got 2 free ones when I went to Starbucks later that afternoon. I liked the neon lime green color of it...don't judge!)
• blue scrapbook paper (the 49 cents cardboard kinds)
• white scrapbook paper (the 49 cents cardboard kinds)
• pink polka dot scrapbook paper (the 29 cents kind)
• blue polka dot scrapbook paper (the 29 cents kind)
• glue gun
• BEST FOR LAST: Your Michaels app so you can save yourself some $$$

Steps (for the Shadowbox):

1). Just lay everything on the floor or a table. I am TOO visual to not have everything I need in front of me. 

2). I then took a paper plate and dabbed my acrylic paint on it. I seriously made all the different colors only using: red, blue, white, and yellow. I played around with a bunch of colors to create the aquamarine (mix white with blue and yellow), green (yellow and blue), and purple (white, blue, and red). 

3). Paint the shadowbox to the color of your liking. I did 2 coats and it dried under 15 mins.!

4). Paint the banners and hello signs to the color of your liking.

5). Paint the little wooden letters (I alternated colors around so I recommend laying out what you are trying to spell in front of you to prevent repeating colors next to each other).

6). Once all the wooden materials are dried, you can decorate your banners. I decorated mine with washi tape that I have in my craft room (also a Michaels purchase using my 50% coupon code on my app last year).

7). This is the difficult part, which I needed my sister's help with. You need to cut enough twine and tie it to one end of the push pin. You will need to secure that to the inside of the shadowbox and make sure before you do the same to the opposite end, that the string is nice and straight (O.C.D).

8). Before repeating the steps 2 more times, make sure you test out the space between each piece of twine to make sure everything is spaced out properly.

9). Decorate to your heart's desire.

Steps (for the Sailor Hats):

***Disclaimer: I used my sister's Cricut machine to make this, but you can definitely sketch it out yourself and see if it comes out to your liking.****

1). After having cut 2 sailor hat shapes (it is layered so it actually is 4 pieces of sailor hats), you will glue them and make sure that the blue background shows up nicely. 

3). You will do the same with the anchor pieces, except you will have one that is pink polk dot and one that is blue polka dot (or whatever pattern you like) and glue the blue background to each of the anchors.

4). Glue the anchors to each hat.

5). Laminate everything for durability.

6). Using your glue gun, glue one straw to the back of each of your sailor hats.

I plan on having each kid take a Photo Booth type photo holding the sailor hat. When they are selected to be the sailor of the month, they will have their pictures featured in the Shadowbox in the bigger Instagram type photo paper. The 2 smaller ones are pictures they can bring from home of their family or pet (their choice, after all...the Sailor of the Month deserves it!).