Gettin' Crafty

As I've been preparing for my first year teaching, I've had a great time crafting several things for my classroom.  I saw someone else's idea for a round "kiosk" where the teacher and students could post real-life examples of things we read every day.  I loved the idea, but there were no instructions on the website for constructing one.  I noodled on it for a while, then thought I needed to find some aluminum sheet I could fashion into a tube.  I asked Pressly's advice, and he suggested any kind of metal would probably end up being way too heavy.  I told him I needed a tube at least 18" in diameter and 4 feet long.  He suggested the round cardboard forms used for pouring concrete pillars.  That sounded like a great idea!

I did what anyone who lives in the boondocks does:  I searched online for it.  I did find some, but I also found that anything larger than a 12" diameter was really too expensive.  One day a few weeks later we were at Home Depot where they carry 12".  After looking at them I decided that was plenty big.  We bought one, then I headed to Hobby Lobby for paint, ribbon, a roll of cork board, and "some kind of circular wood" for the top.

After gathering up all my supplies, they sat for a week or so as I considered how the project would best be achieved.  I finally started by priming and painting the tube.  That part went pretty well, so I painted the round wood plate I bought for the topper.  Another success!

Then I decided it was time to break out the 3M permanent spray adhesive and attach the cork board.  Uh.  Not such a success.  I ended up getting the cork on crooked.  Did I mention the adhesive was permanent?  Yeah.  Thankfully it was only off by 1/4" or so, and I easily used my high-temp glue gun to cover the crooked line with a ribbon border.  Only the ribbon was also crooked.  WAY, WAY crooked. 

So I pulled out a measuring tape and a red marker and measured off a straight line all the way around.  Then I went back to Hobby Lobby and bought some fabric and some more ribbon.  This time I slowed down and made sure to attach the fabric in a straight line around the top of the cork board, and viola!  Success!  I then used my handy-dandy high temp glue gun to attach the top.  Now I just need to buy a 5 gallon bucket and a bag of playground sand to create a weighted base and it's all ready!  I'm super excited about the possibilities.

 Next up?  Fun with the Cricut...