Pages

Friday, August 16, 2013

Teacher Week 2013: Tips & Tricks - Make a Fabric Bulletin Board from "scratch"

 
I'm back for a quick post on the last day of teacher week!
 
I've gotten a lot of questions about the fabric "bulletin boards" that were in my classroom pictures earlier this week.

 Example #1 - blue polka dotted board beside the Smartboard

Example #2- yellow chevron board above community supply shelf

Example #3 - hot pink board above (soon to be blue shelves) for math manipulatives

The truth is they are not bulletin boards at all...it's just plain ol' fabric on my painted cinderblock walls.  So, I figured I'd go ahead and make that a quick trick to share.  I think I've finally mastered the easiest (and quickest) way to put fabric on the walls after several years of trial and error.
 
So, first things first.  You need to meet my hot, new BFF.
 
Here she is.
 
 
Isn't she beautiful?
 
This is a cordless glue gun.  I've borrowed one from one of my coworkers for going on 7 years now so I finally broke down at bought my own (at JoAnns).  It's fabulous.  You can use it for quite a while before putting it back on its base to heat up again.  I'm sure you could do this without a cordless gun but this makes it way easier.
 
I put up almost everything in my room with hot glue because it's the only thing that stays all year.  Most of the time it pops right off of the wall with no problems but every now and then you'll get a glob that doesn't want to come off without the paint. 
 
Soooo...I figured out a different way to hang things instead of putting the hot glue directly on the wall. 
 
 
Painter's tape!
 
Just put the tape wherever you want to hang something and the hot glue goes on the painter's tape.  If you need to take it down, you just peel the painter's tape off and there is absolutely no mess or damage!
 
You can also put painter's tape on whatever it is that you are hanging so that it won't be damaged if you want to take it down or move it but I didn't do that with my fabric because I figured by the time I wanted a change, I would be ready for new fabric.
 
The best part is this makes the whole process go super duper fast AND helps you get your fabric straight on the wall!
 
 
More tape and the fabric is on its way up!
 
*Notice the purple bandaid...yes...my hot little bff can be kind of feisty sometimes.  We have somewhat of an unhealthy relationship.  She burns me.  I say bad things to her and then I forgive her and love her once more.  Sigh.*

If you need a little extra staying power for a larger board...this stuff works great and wipes off the wall with a Clorox wipe pretty easily.

 
 It works fine without anything except hot glue around the edges, though!

Then, you can put your border up the same way OR hot glue your border straight on the fabric.

 
Now you have a brand new bulletin board and less ugly cinderblock wall!
 
Please excuse the hot mess below the board.  It is going to be dealt with soon. ;)
 
Happy Friday!
 
 
 

48 comments:

Nikki Lishinski said...

Thanks for the great tip! Your classroom looks so cute!!

Nikki
The Cozy Classroom

Rachel said...

Awesome tips! Thanks for sharing!!
A Tall Drink of Water

Linz said...

This looks great! How do you hang things on the fabric? Does it hold well?

dbednars said...

Thank you for sharing that tip! Now, I definitely have to try it.

Nicole said...

How do you put Things ON the bulletin board once it's up? :-)

Mrs D. said...

wonderful blog...a lot of great ideas!
http://mrsdclasses.blogspot.it/

Alicia Johnson said...

how do you get things to attach on your "bulletin boards"? I put material on slate chalkboard this year, but can not figure out how to attach anything to the material (except now maybe hot glue will work)- Thanks

Jenna said...

I'm also interested in how you would attach charts and posters to your bulletin boards.

Unknown said...

How do you attach stuff to the fabric after it is already up?

Miss Rachel said...

How do you attach things to the "board" if you have to attach everything with hot glue then it can't be interchangeable student work or theme related things right?

SheBlogs said...

I imagine this would be for her more permanent things like, classroom rules or school universals. She probably hot glues those or uses tape. You can also put Velcro dots on the fabric in order for kids to manipulate what's on the board.

Unknown said...

Great idea! I was wondering if the board can be taken down for summer then reused the next year?

Erin said...

Awesome idea!!!!! I have a perfect place to try this in.

Anonymous said...

What do you use to hang things ON the bulletin board?

Anonymous said...

Great idea! Never thought about painters tape to make a straight line. I've done this before with bulletin board paper and Mavalus tape (only tape I can get to stick to cinderblock). I used command hooks on the paper (hole punch charts) and also hot glued those magnetic clips to the paper to clip things too. Velcro works too. Probably best for fabric.

Anonymous said...

Did anyone ever find out how items are attached to the bulletin board?

Unknown said...

I bet glue dots would work!!

likemartha said...

you should be able to use masking tape to stick things to it that way you can change out the information/projects on the board

Anonymous said...

When I have hung fabric or paper from a cork strip to make a bulletin board display, I just put lots of staping or masking tape on the back of the things I hang. It works fine and looks better than just hanging on a blank wall.

Anonymous said...

Painter's tape doesn't stick to my cinder blocks very long....must be the type of paint the school used. I don't want to pull any paint off my walls with the hot glue. I love this idea, but I'm not sure how I could do it....

Julie S said...

Genius! I've been dealing with ugly cinderblock walls forever.

Anonymous said...

This is absolutely brilliant! And so simple! Yeah, I'll be using this in my room....
Thank you!

Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing! I'm wondering if you could use safety pins to hang things on these boards. That would make them interchangeable without damaging the fabric with hot glue. I want to make a couple of these boards for next year. I have cinderblock walls for the first time ever and am trying to figure out how to make them more functional.

Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing! I'm wondering if you could use safety pins to hang things on these boards. That would make them interchangeable without damaging the fabric with hot glue. I want to make a couple of these boards for next year. I have cinderblock walls for the first time ever and am trying to figure out how to make them more functional.

Lisa said...

What type of fabric works best? This is a great idea.

Unknown said...

Bonjour,où trouvez vous la colle chaude,quelle marque utilisez vous.
merci pour votre réponse

nhuthuy said...

Thanks for sharing, nice post!

Anthaison chuyên cung cấp máy đưa võng tự động hay còn gọi là võng điện tốt nhất cho bé yêu và là địa chỉ bán máy đưa võng giá rẻ tốt nhất cũng như giải đáp thắc mắc may dua vong tu dong gia bao nhieu trên thị trường hiện nay.

amanda joseph said...

sealing tape supplier

radiovybe said...

I have to search sites with relevant information on given topic and provide them to teacher our opinion and the article.

스포츠토토
토토
안전놀이터
토토사이트

imgur said...

This is an excellent post I seen thanks to share it. It is really what I wanted to see hope in future you will continue for sharing such a excellent post.

사설토토
카지노
파워볼사이트
바카라사이트

Anonymous said...

https://gameeffect.xyz A lot of people have liked the video game of baseball for many years. There are actually enthusiasts around the world, from specialized tiny-leaguers to expire-hard spectators. This information has ideas to show how pleasant baseball actually is.

Anonymous said...

https://gamezoom.xyz Finding a exercise lover can substantially enhance your muscle mass-developing effects. Your partner can be quite a important way to obtain determination for adhering to your exercise routine program, and forcing you to definitely increase your initiatives as you figure out. Possessing a trustworthy spouse to work through with can also help help keep you harmless since you will always possess a spotter.

토토사이트 said...

I read your article well It's been a great help I will visit you again to read your article. Thank you

slot gacor said...

If it adds nothing under a left-zero-padding assumption, then it is irrelevant and should be removed. Would you agree with that?

But since it is present, I take its very existence to mean something. Especially since in _most_ base encodings, the implementation of padding is meant to line up the N-bit-space with the 8-bit (octet) unit of data storage in all files, and is always right-padded.

slot gacor said...

I believe that the very presence of this sentence is probitive of a "Concatenative Iterative Encoding" interpretation.

I would prefer the specification be re-issued with these ambiguities removed.

I see no reason to not have both: 1) a specification for encoding a single number, and 2) a specification for a data encoding that operates on octets and must be zero-padded to the right if the final bit count is not a multiple of 5 and 8 -- like regular base64, base32, or the Zooko-base32 encoding.

slot online said...

Likewise, it would be neat if people acknowledged the differences when they were teaching base64 as ONLY "Concatenative Iterative Encoding". As an example of that is this blog post
http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/base-what-a-practical-introduction-to-base-encoding--net-27590
where the author starts with a "Place-Based Single Number Encoding" interpretation until he gets to base32 and base64 at which point he switches to a "Concatenative Iterative Encoding" interpretation.

slot gacor said...

"You gave me the number: 1100001011000010110000101100001
It is 31 digits long. Its decimal representation is 1633771873. I feel no ambiguity in understanding what number it represents -- and yet it is not a multiple of 5-bits. Why do I need to pad four extra zeros to the left (35 bits now), to make it a multiple of 5? Why is Crockford-32 telling me I should zero-pad?"

slot gacor said...

Your process in obtaining 1633771873 was the following:

representation in base 2 "1100001011000010110000101100001"
->
abstract mathematical integer
->
representation in base 10 "1633771873"

slot gacor said...

You're using algebra (multiplications, divisions) to convert back and forth to the abstract mathematical integer. It's the only way to do it, because 10 and 2 are not powers of some common radix, that is, log 10 / log 2 is irrational.

But, if you want to convert it to base 16 or 32, there is another way:
representation in base 2 "1100001011000010110000101100001"

togel sgp said...

padded representation in base 2 "00001 10000 10110 00010 11000 01011 00001" (the spaces are here just for clarity)
->
representation in base 32 "1GP2RB1"

Here, each step is simple, local, and involves no algebra: the first step pads to a multiple of 5 bits, and the second step is just a lookup of the symbol corresponding to each group of 5 binary digits. The reason you need to pad to a multiple of 5 bits is simply that you couldn't do the lookup if you couldn't split the binary string into groups of exactly 5 bits!

안전 토토사이트 said...

What a nice information, great article.

메이저-토토사이트 said...

Thanks so much for your helpful tips!

카지노사이트 said...

Your post is very great.i read this post this is a very helpful.

파워볼사이트 said...

Great post. Thank you for providing this information.

sportstotozonecom said...


This is great content for your readers. Feel free to visit my website;

slotplayground said...


This article is truly amazing. Appreciative for sharing such mind blowing information.

sportstotozonecom said...


I am really pleased to read this blog posts which includes tons of valuable information.

slotplayground said...


"I would like to thanks' for the efforts you have put in writing this blog.

Post a Comment