Birthday Board

Update...Sadly, on February 3, 2013, my school was lost in a 3-alarm fire. Everything burned to the ground. I loved this birthday board, but have yet to remake it. Maybe this coming school year I will be able to recreate this. It was one of my favorite creations for my classroom.

Having time off work for Christmas gave me an opportunity to spend some much needed time perusing as many blogs as I could and Pintrest. Yeah, I know...I can't tear myself away from it either. My goal was to find an inspiration and boy did I! A Birthday Board that I just couldn't take my eyes off. Inspiration Birthday Board

Since it was Christmas time, I set out to create a Birthday Board of my own for as close to zero cost as possible. Where else to start than a dig through my supplies and garage. I hit the jackpot! A few years ago, when my girls went to a summer program, they each made a painted board. These boards have been in the garage for quite some time and I knew they wouldn't mind me repurposing one after they had already broken the boards into smaller pieces. The perfect scrap was 22 inches long by 4 inches wide. Perfect! Next, time to go through the cans of spray paint...I am loving spray paint lately have I mentioned that yet? I wanted the wood piece to be black and just so happened to have some black paint left over and found the can of primer as well. I was ready!

First, I sanded down the edges of the wood, primed and painted the wood black. It took a day or two for this process since I was spray painting in the wet, humid, winter temps and weather. While it was drying, I was able to start planning my next steps.

Normally, I don't care for primary color combinations. They feel to "primary" school to me. Just not my style. But, I was digging it for the project. Oh, yeah, this Birthday Board is for my classroom, which is a blue and green color palette. The fact that I did want to use primary colors this time surprised me a bit but just like all good design, too much of a good thing can be bad. There is already a lot of blue and green in my classroom and I don't want the color palette to start feeling "flat" so this pop of primary and black will fit beautifully.

A trip through my cardstock and I had 5 colors ready to cut into circles; red, blue, green, yellow, orange and purple. Using the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge, I cut umpteen million, okay probably more like 100, 1.5 inch circles. These would be the pieces hanging below the board with a student name and date on it. Using the Cuttin' Up cartridge, I made 1 inch, lowecase letters for the month circles on the bottom of the board. I made 2 inch letters for "Birthdays" in the same font.

I love the fonts on the Cuttin' Up cartridge.

Once the paint was dry, it was time to start planning out placement. I strive to be as exact as possible...my mom taught me that perfection is not attainable so strive for excellence. Over the years, I've added to that with learning that the beauty in so many things is actually the imperfections. So, from here on out, you'll see how I strive for excellence and yet allow for imperfection to enhance my projects.

Adjusting placement before gluing things down.

I'm a planner, plain and simple. An extra piece of posterboard lying around served as a great planning guide. I measured out the size of the board and began placing the letters and month circles on the board using the posterboard as my measuring guide. On the posterboard is a line marking the 4 inch width as well as a line down the center of the 22 inch length. Since "Birthdays" is 9 letters long, the "h" needed to be in the center of the board. Then, I adjusted the placement of the other letters to the left and right until I had it just the way I wanted it. The month circles were placed the same way...from June and July on either side of the center line to January and December on either end. Once I was happy with their placement, I glued them in place.

While I was waiting for the glue to dry, I used a white gel pen to write names and the day of birth on the hanging circles. It turned out that it was too hard to see the white gel pen on the yellow circles so that color was eliminated from the hanging circles. I intentionally placed colors so there were not any same colors next to each other.

Playing with placement...and keeping the numbers in order from beginning of the month to the end.

Attaching the hanging circles to the board was my next challenge. I went with white ribbon. It is inexpensive and would be easy to get year after year so I can continue to use and update the board. Of course I planned this out too, lol! Using a month with only one birthday, I decided how far I wanted it to hang under the board. Then, I marked that length on the posterboard planning guide to ensure all the hanging circles would be about the same distance under the board....imperfection at its finest!

Sorry it's sideways....do you see the small - indicating where the top of the circle should be?

Each month was done this way. Months with more than one circle were done as follows. Place the last circle for the month at the end of the ribbon with hot glue. Then, place the next one on the ribbon, adjusting for distance and finally gluing down with hot glue.

Strings hanging circles

Once the string was done, I used the measuring guide to cut the length of the ribbon at the top. On the back of the board, I measured and marked where I wanted the top of the ribbon to be. Be careful here...you'll need to make sure you're lining up with the month letters on the front of the board. My strategy was to hold the board up looking at the front, put the ribbon piece behind and mark the top of the ribbon with the white gel pen on the back so I knew exactly where to line up the ribbon when gluing it down.

Okay, so I didn't totally wait for the paint to dry...that's primer you see but it's on the back, no one will see in the end.

Marks used to line up the ribbon for the correct length.

I kept doing this until all the circles were in place. I used 3M Picture Hanging strips to adhere it to my classroom wall.  I put it right by my desk too so I can easily see whose birthday is coming up. :)

Voila!! I love how it turned out!