About Bulletin Boards

I bet you're all terribly intrigued.  =)

Bulletin boards are both a great love of mine, and a great pain.  They are the one part of my prep that is making large art that I get to try at (not a whipped-together sample of an art project for my kids) but they are so large and I get so wrapped up that they usualy take me an entire Saturday.  Or an entire night, from after school until 8 pm.

I have one simple tip I learned from the 2nd grade teacher at my school (who is also an art fanatic!)
We cover the board with large backing paper (like one would anyway...), then either
1) draw the entire bulletin board directly onto the paper   or
2) GLUE the bullein board pieces onto the large paper.   or
3) Some combination of those.

This is slightly more time-consuming than stapling each piece up quickly, and does not work if you are the sort who keeps and re-uses letters or borders.  But I tend to make all of the pieces of my bulletin boards by hand, so there is nothing I need to particularly re-use.

When the bulletin board needs to be changed, I simply remove the staples from the large paper, take down the whole board in one piece, and roll it up to store in a labeled poster tube.  The next time I want that bulletin board (I intend to rotate them every couple of years) I can just unfurl it and staple it back up in 30 seconds.

This method reduces take-down time with fewer staples to pull and pieces to stack, and, after 2 or 3 years of bulletin board making, should prevent me from needing to make bulletin boards anymore!

Have you had any great bulletin board revelations?