All You Need is Love

I love February! It's such a fun time, especially in the classroom! I wanted to design a bulletin board to help spread the love. This is what I came up with. 

Here's a short how-to video of this bulletin board too! I can't believe I let my husband talk me into making a video!

My bulletin board was inspired by the book The Day it Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond. It became my mission to find things around my house that I could use instead of going out and spending a ton of money. I think I came out pretty successful. Here's a break down on the supplies and cost:

What I purchase:

Boarder (pink and white)- $4.00

Yellow table cloth- .99¢

Sheathing (the actual bulletin board)- $14.00. You can view our video for more on that here. 

Things I already had:

Wrapping paper (background)- 0

Yarn- 0

Paper for hearts- 0

Umbrella handle- 0

Paint- 0

Batting (clouds) - 0

Thumb tacks-  0 

Paint brush- 0

Sponge brush- 0 

First things first, put up the background- I used blue wrapping paper. Then have you kiddos paint paper hearts. Of course you can have your students design and decorate the hearts any way you would like. My students have always loved painting so I try to give them the opportunity to paint as much as possible. Go here to get the heart templates that I used.

I only used the colors you see above- green, white, red, pink, blue, yellow, and purple (he's hiding in the back).  I added white to the other colors to get the pretty shades you see below. Don't be afraid to mix colors. Just play around with it and have fun! If you have older students, you may want to let them play around with mixing colors as well.

Oh yeah and I actually used resume paper for the hearts. After moving into our new house and organizing our office supplies, we ended finding 5 packs of resume paper with a couple sheets used out of each pack. I also really liked the texture of the paper. The exact type of paper I used was linen cover stock 25% cotton. You will definitely want to use a thicker paper as thin sheets will tend to roll up after you add paint.

I absolutely loved how the hearts turned out! I basically painted the whole heart with one color using a regular brush, using an up and down motion. I then added a few strokes of a contrasting color or two. I used a sponge brush (using a light up and down motion again) to blend the colors together.

Below is the yellow table cloth I ended up using for the umbrella. I thought the look of the plastic table cloth was perfect for the top of the umbrella.  You can go here to see my video on how I made the umbrella.

Here is a picture of some of the packaging filler that I used to place under the umbrella to give it a nice 3D look.

Closer look- a shot looking underneath the umbrella. I attached the packaging filler to the bulletin board with scotch tape. My umbrella handle actually came out of a pack of decorative vase filler that I bought from Wal-Mart a couple of years ago. The stick is light weight and scotch tape held it up nicely.

I was thrilled with how my umbrella turned out! I also took some of the table cloth and wrapped it around the bottom of the umbrella handle.

After the hearts are dry you can attach them to the yarn.

Super easy! Just use tape!
PS- IF you are a bit of a perfectionist like me, you may want to paint the back of the hearts too. In my old classroom the air conditioning would blow around the items on my bulletin boards. I know it would have  blown these little heart stings around and seeing the white side of the heart would have drove me absolutely crazy!

Next- I used a cloud template and traced it onto some quilting batting that I had. I cut out 5 clouds. 

You can get the cloud template here. 

After the hearts are attached to the yarn and the clouds are cut out- you're ready to put it all together. I used little cardboard pieces that came on the corner of some frames that I purchased a few months ago. For some reason I kept those little things and I'm glad I did. I know that many crafts stores have little cardboard boxes that would be good to achieve the same look. 

I took a thumb tack and connected the card board piece to the bulletin board. Next, I took another thumb tack and placed it through the middle of a cloud AND the the middle of the yarn that my hearts were attached to. 

Ta da! The finished bulletin board! I'm pretty much in love with it! Oh and be sure to let your students have the hearts that they painted back so that they can help spread the love in February as well! 

I hope you are feeling inspired to get started on making your classroom festive! If you have any questions or would like some help please feel free to e-mail me at ashlee@izzyshare.com.  

We would love to see your bulletin boards! Please share your photos with us at izzyshare.com.