Every year my kid's elementary school has a very loved tradition of decorating each teacher's door. Classroom teachers typicaly have their class role on them, while teachers such as gifted, art, music, and the media center have more room for art since they see too many kids to list them all. 

The first year I signed up to help decorate my son's teacher's door. I decided to do the itinerant art and music teachers door at the last minute as no one had signed up for it and my friend was the itinerant art teacher at the time. I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut different types of catoon succulents and pots out of posterboard, while another mom cut out the letters. After designing the art and music door, I found that the posterboard I had wasn't wide enough. I decided to freehand the shapes at the bottom to fill the space with what I had. When we got to the school to hang the doors, I found myself trimming the large paper to fit the door and having to flip designs to accomodate door handles. This was a huge learning experience and one I enjoyed so much, that I signed up earlier and for more doors the following year.

The second year I signed up for 5 doors. My son had 2 doors, my daughter had 1, and again I signed up for the itinerant art and music teachers, while also adding in the media specialist. I found that cutting out the letters individually the previous year took a huge amount of time in both the cutting and pasting for each door. This year I decided to hand letter the doors to cut down on the amount of time needed to hang each door. This year I broke out the spray paint, colored tape, and patterned papers to add interest to the backgrounds. As the school mascot is the mustang, creating a "horse-head" nebula for an "out of this world" theme was my favorite design.

Last year I signed up for the same 5 doors. Having scrambled the last 2 years to either hang the doors in the time we were given on campus or to finish the designs in general, I was much better prepared. I had templates already built for my digital sketches, I had a process to use our digital projector to trace text onto the papers to be filled in with inks and paints. I had a template taped onto our floor to account for where the door handles would be. Spray paint made a comeback to add interest and glitter to the backgrounds. My daughter helped paint the art and music teacher's door with solid tempra paint sticks that were very fun to use. Having acquired a new laser printer, I put that to work for fun sweet treat names, custom calculator names, and to add a very cool astronaut riding the mustang mascot for another year of space themed doors.

This has been one of my very favorite volunteer projects over the years and I look forward to it again this year. Being able to take my digital design to finished product and problem solving along the way has been a very satisfying way to challenge myself and try out new art techniques all at once. Some techniques and designs have been more successful than others, but its all been a great learning experience in thanks of people who do so much for my family and my community.