• Pages

  • Activities and Competitions

    Organizing activities and competitions can be fun but there are times you need some fresh input. In the activity drop-down menu below, you can find heaps of ideas. What about a Paper Plane Competition?

  • Activities

  • TIP: Think inside the hat!

    Party hats, store-bought or made from pages of an old book or scrap paper are very useful for a display. You can staple the hat to the board as a container for whatever you want to showcase. Or hang them in front of the board filled with little notes, poems, toy animals or whatever takes your fancy

  • TIP: Staple at an angle

    Removing old display items will be much easier when you hold the stapler at an angle when you tack items to the board. The staples will stick out at one side - perfect to get hold of and pull them out when you change displays.

  • TIP: Use a glue gun

    Glue guns are the most fantastic tools for creating displays. You can attach all sorts of materials like hard plastic, metal, fabric and everything else you can think off. Be careful with your fingers (blow - blow) the glue is very hot and you easily get blisters

  • TIP: Create a 3D effect!

    Create a 3D effect by hanging objects in front of the display board, like fish in a Sea Life display or lanterns in a Spring or Garden display.

Pirates

Posted on October 3rd, 2013 by Anita

Pig-tailed pirates on ancient sailingboats keep rousing the student’s imagination. With their colourful clothes, one eye and hook-hand, every adventurous boy wants to read about  the wild life at sea. They would love to feel the parrot on their shoulder shouting dirty words while the wind  is flapping the sails.

Making a display with those ingredients isn’t difficult.

What you need:

  • display material like the hook, parrot, pirate flags, colourful fabric, netting
  • copied (enlarged) images of pirates
  • sand coloured paper with burned edges (or drenched in coffee (see comments)
  •  blu-tack/ tape/ stapler/ scissors/ guillotine/ ruler/ glue stick  

What to do:

This pirate display was made with old and new material. The top part images were used in a previous year and stored in our display files. The bottom images are new and copied from our own pirate books. The gold coloured background was used in a previous display but I changed the borders which changed the look and made it match with the pirate images.

I made new signs to encourage the students to read the books on the display stand. To match them with the images on the board and to give them that ancient adventurous look of secret papers found in an old chest, I burned the edges till they curled up. That made them very rustic and authentic.

To emphasize the different pirate flags and to break with the usual pattern of three of the same panels on a row I created the V shape in the middle. It immediately attracts the eye.

The flags aren’t flat but bulging to make them look like waving in the wind (see:

Filed under: Adventure, Maritime, Travel

« »

Comments are closed.

  • What’s On In The Upcoming Months?

    World Space Week: 4 – 10 October 2020, Theme: ‘Satellites Improve Life’

    For more examples check out the “‘Time Travel; from Moa to Mars display. It might give you another set of ideas.

  • An idea for your next display? Wishful thinking

    Keep on the lookout for unusual, funny or cartoon-like images in magazines, on internet or in the daily paper like the image above. Cut or copy them and store them for when you need inspiration.
    One of those unusual images can be the basis for a great display. You don't need to do the whole design yourself.

  • Or what about this one? Free will, an illusion?

  • TIP: Use old umbrellas as a display unit!

    Old umbrellas without the fabric but with a good frame are fantastic as a display item You can hang little objects like birds, light bulbs, little books and art objects from the frame. Fluffy fabric draped over the frame will give it an extra elegance.... let your imagination run wild and experiment!

  • TIP: Keep an action list

    I am not particularly good at it myself - I'm an ad hoc person - but it is one of my recommendations when I give display workshops. It helps you keeping track of what you're going to do. Make a rough sketch of how the display will look like and write down what materials and tools you're going to need Create a time-line / checklist: This week copying and laminating - Next week: buy or beg materials - Two weeks: covering display boxes with matching paper - Three weeks: collect books matching the display etc. till you reach D-day and start getting nervous....

  • TIP: Don’t overdue it!

    Too much text, images or books on display too close together distract the eye. It all becomes a blur. Each object needs its own space. Think of a shop window that is more than full with appliances, you can’t distinguish one object from the other, while carefully placed objects attract the attention.

  • Meta