Monday, June 29, 2015

Monday Made It: June 29, 2015


It's Monday! Plus, I finally had some time to get some stuff done and share for Monday Made It! Remember to click this link here after reading to check out all the other awesome Monday Made Its too.

Alot of my Made Its this summer will probably be related to my theme switch for this year. This past year I went with a fish theme, but I've decided to finally take the dive and go with a theme that I know I will be happy with for several years, so I have decided to use Harry Potter as my theme for my room (nevermind that I'm a HUGE HP nerd). So, here are my made it's for this week:

New Class Rules Display

I'm a firm believer that classrooms don't need a ton of rules to function well. In my classroom, I use the acronym ROAR as my class rules - which works well for my kiddos since our school's mascot is a lion. The acronym stands for Respect, Organization, Accountability, and Responsibility. With switching to a Harry Potter theme, my mind immediately went to the educational decrees that Umbridge starts putting all over Hogwarts during HP and the Order of the Phoenix. So I found a way to word my rules so they fit into the way the educational decrees were written and made the actual educational decrees in photoshop. Then I printed them large enough (11x17) from Staples and framed them for display in my room. A note about the frames...I went with frames from Target that were $10 each, which I loved because they are lightweight and the glass isn't actually glass...it's plastic which makes me feel better about what would happen if one of the frames somehow accidentally got knocked off the wall by a wayward 4th grader. Here's a picture of the finished product...

Also, I have the PDFs of the educational decrees here for you to download free if you are interested in using them for your own HP inspired room.



Great Hall Candles

I also wanted my classroom to feel a bit like the Great Hall at Hogwarts. Usually throughout the year I use ceiling hooks as a way to display some of my students work. Since at the beginning of the year I don't have any work to display yet, I thought it would be cool to use the hooks as a way to hang candles from the ceiling so it could look a little like the ceiling in the Great Hall. Obviously hanging actual candles wouldn't work, so I did the next best thing, and broke out my silhouette machine (I LOVE this machine...seriously...best crafting invention ever). I searched through the design store for Silhouette and found a cool candle template. I used some cardstock to cut out the pieces and assembled them using my Xyron machine (another awesome crafting invention) to put an adhesive backing on the drippy wax piece. I used the drippy piece as a way to stick the flame to the main candle part. Once they were assembled I ran the whole thing through my Scotch laminator. In total, I made 30 candles to hang throughout my room. Here's a picture of some of the finished ones.


Hogwarts Express Sign

My HP theme wouldn't be complete without a sign for the Hogwarts Express. I went to Hobby Lobby and they had wood sign pieces and I found one that I thought would work for what I wanted. I broke out my Silhouette machine again to cut the template pieces out and then painted a red base coat on the wood. It needed 2 coats to really cover the way I wanted it to. Then I traced all the template pieces onto the wood and painted them in. Lastly, I used the gold paint to do the trim detail around the sign. I also got a clear sealer to protect the sign and sprayed it on after the pain was dry. Here is how the sign turned out:


4th of July Decor

My last made it isn't school related...it's something I made for my house for 4th of July. There is a nifty little local craft place near me that sells precut wood kits that you can buy and then decorate and assemble them to make cute things. I get stuff from there all the time, and this latest piece I got was Uncle Sam. I wanted to go for a bit of an aged/antiqued look to it, so I stained all the wood pieces first:

I let the wood stain dry for 24 hours before doing anything else so that way there was no risk of the color of the stain leeching into the decorative papers I planned on using. I found some Americana themed papers and cut and trimmed them to fit the different wood pieces. I also painted Uncle Sam's face and hair and added in some ribbon trim for a little added flair. In the end, here is how Uncle Sam turned out:


Well, those are all of my Monday Made Its for this week. Again, don't forget to check out all the other Made Its that have linked up this week (link up at the top of this post).

--Stephanie

5 comments:

  1. Love, love, love your Harry Potter theme! Can't wait to see more of your creations!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks so much! I've posted some more of my HP theme materials as part of this week's Monday Made It as well!

      Delete
  2. Your Uncle Sam turned out super cute!
    Laura
    Enchanting Elementary

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dude, I'm going to come to your class and be in it. Harry Potter theme? Heck yeah <3 <3 <3

    Love these made-its!

    Anisa @ Creative Undertakings

    ReplyDelete

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