DIY Classroom Borders

Summer is only 2 months away and I'm still working on getting my classroom perfectly decorated. First year teachers really do have it tough! Since I'm a first year teacher and don't necessarily have a whole lot of money to keep pouring into my classroom, I decided to opt out of buying bulletin board borders. After shopping with a few of my teacher friends, I quickly realized that I am way too picky to be willing to buy a few packages of borders that were specific colors and designs. I wanted to keep up with my rainbow theme, but all of the rainbow themed borders at the stores were just not up to par with my standards and style. Instead, I created my own. Not only did I get them to look exactly the way I imagined them to look, I also saved money.


  All I really did was grab some blank printer paper from the copy room and got to work. I folded the sheets in half and glued on some geometric shapes that I cut out of construction paper/card stock paper. I had the card stock already and I had used it as a background/border for one of the projects the kids did, so the left over scraps were already cut. I just put them in a Ziplock baggie hoping to get some use out of them later on. Well they definitely went to good use. I glued on the geometric shapes in a tile and grout mosaic type of design. I didn't have any purple card stock so I just used what I had. After gluing the pieces on, I stapled the half sheets onto the wall as my borders! Yeah they're shorter than normal classroom borders but hey they're basically free! I am actually loving the design and I am planning to get the pieces laminated at the end of the year to reuse them for my future classroom(s).

-Just a note- 

     It was suggested to me from some other teachers to just have the students make them since I was doing it all myself, and when I was just about finished I gave in and let them help make some. They turned out really bad. Unfortunately, I had to scrap their glue drenched masterpieces. Even high schoolers can get crazy with a glue bottle! Who knew!? Anyways, if you're as anal as I am when it comes to having your art and decorations perfect, save yourself the trouble (and the glue!) and just do it yourself!

    I stapled all of the borders connecting one end to another and they really did turn out exactly how I had imagined them to. The work inside was put up for a demo photo as I was waiting for some colorful background paper, so it looks a bit awkward and bare here. Our school doesn't allow poster paper to go to any teachers, just ASB, so it took a while to actually get my hands on some. Luckily, one of my sweetest students has a mom that works at another school and brought me some in all different colors! She's such a sweetheart. After putting up the paper, readjusting the borders to cover the edges and ultimately reorganizing the work in a much more appealing manner, WHA LAH. My classroom DIY masterpiece.