Thursday, August 15, 2013

Getting Crafty with Student Mailboxes



I'm beginning my 5th year of teaching, and for the first four years I've had the same red paper sorters. Last year, when I found out I was teaching 3rd grade I decided to order an identical additional paper sorter so that I would have enough to use them as student mailboxes. They're certainly not cheap, but they are pretty sturdy. They're a cardboard-type material, and fairly easy to put together (if I could put it together, I consider it amazingly easy). You can find them here.

Anyway, I was silly and taped things to the sides of my sorters, and because it is a paper product, when I removed the tape I removed a little bit of the color also. They ended up looking like a hot mess...


You can see the tape marks, which really looked terrible...

Because my room is a "jungle" theme and zebra print seems to be EVERYWHERE now (I love when shopping is easy) I decided to spray paint the organizers black. I got the cheapest spray paint from Wal-Mart and two cans covered all three mailboxes.

Cost: $1.96

If I were going to do this again I might invest in a slightly higher quality spray paint...



As you can see the coverage wasn't the best, but it looks better in person than it does in the photo.

Anyway, I decided to get a little funky with duct tape and bought zebra duct tape. It has now become my new favorite decorating tool.

I ended up using almost one roll per set of mailboxes. The rolls were a little around $3.50 each, but they add a lot of fun :)


Cost: $10.50

Total Cost: $12.46

Did these come out 100% as I planned? No. I'll be honest, after seeing the spray paint I was really discouraged, but after I dressed it up with some zebra duct tape I was a happy camper.

Happy school year!





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