How to Be A Successful Student Bulletin Board

When I got back to the residence halls for RA Training I realized that my staff meant business and that everyone was going to have exceptional bulletin boards. I love making my bulletin boards so the fact that I was going to have the pleasure of living in a building surrounded by fantastic boards was music to my ears. I was inspired by this picture/chart/thing I found on Pinterest and I took the idea and ran with it.

My board is broken up into the following categories:

-Living Somewhere New

-Living With a Roommate

-Managing Your Time (my personal favorite)

-Getting the most out of college

And in case I had residents that did not want to read the whole board (because those residents are everywhere, right?)

-Surviving the Year Cheat Sheet

I love this board because it allowed me to freehand and trace a ton of pictures and make the board super colorful and eye-grabbing. But if you are looking for your back-to-school bulletin board I hope mine inspires your's!

Sailboat Door Decs!

Hello hello! It is back to school again, and I want to share with all of the RAs that follow my blog my door decs for the semester! I made 45 of these things and it took weeks to complete them. I will warn you that each door dec cost me a little less than $1 so if you are interested in recreating this idea and not spend as much I will be sure to include a cheaper supplies list at the end!

What I used to make the Door Decs:

This Template

Colored Cardstock (one piece for each door dec)

Brown Cardstock (bottom piece of boat)

Lighter Brown Cardstock (main boat frame)

Flat craft sticks

Fabric for the sales

Cotton Balls for clouds

I printed the template out onto cardstock and used it to trace out the different parts of the boat and sails. You would think that would be the most tedious part of the whole thing, the tracing and cutting out of all the pieces. Nope! Gluing definitely took the longest, I would glue 15 together and be done fore the night! But once I had them all finished they looked fantastic. To make the clouds you just have to gently pull at a cotton ball until it looks like a cloud and glue it on! I think the template made this so much easier than it would have been if I was just working from scratch.

Here are some more pictures!:

 This was the first one I completed, I was super proud.

 These are the different designs I made for my residents.

My finished works of art taking over the dining room table.

Because I did not want to include a Resident's name or room number on my blog I will show you the personalized door dec I made for myself!

I used two different fonts, one to write the name of the resident and the other to do the room number.

I even included cats!

I know that not many RAs are interested in spending $1 per door dec so here are some different ways that you can make this door dec with cheaper supplies:

Instead of Cardstock, use construction paper! It is much cheaper and you get a lot more for the price.

Instead of fabric, also use construction paper, or possibly tissue paper, get creative!

Hand write your resident's names instead of using computer paper and ink to print them out.