May: Pixar Themed Display

We were very lucky to have Nathan Stanton, Story Supervisor for Pixar, come to our school to give a talk about the work he has done at Pixar. He was fascinating, showing clips from Monsters Inc., Cars 2, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life and more! Inspired by his visit I created a Pixar themed display.

As you can image this took a long time to create. I separated out each character into layers and cut the pieces out using the Silhouette Cameo, then I glued all the pieces together.

For the Up! border I found some clip art of patches and arranged them into two rows.
For the Monster's Inc border I used the flower symbol in Photoshop and created flowers in various sizes and colors to mimic Boo's door.

For the birds at the top of the display I created three different type of eyes to give the birds different looks and when I taped them to the bookshelf I varied the different bird designs to make them look as unique as possible.

Behind the cars shelf I created a desert scene using two shades of brown and one of orange. I made Mater and McQueen using the Silhouette Cameo and the layering as I mentioned above, I also included the car that was inspired by Nathan Stanton.

At the very bottom of the display I added Wall-E and A Bug's Life, cutting out grass and creating a caution border as seen on Wall-E.

Here are the desert files if you want to trace and cut them out or use them with the Silhouette Cameo:

 Orange desert files:

Dark Brown Desert files:

Army Men file:

 

Mine Bird files:

Mine Birds Wooden Post files:

February: Blind Date With A Books, Take Three! Display

It's that time of year again, Blind Date With A Book! Everyone's favorite interactive display! This year I chose to do a flower theme instead of a heart theme as in the years before. With our new Silhouette Cameo I was able to cut out dozens of 3D flowers, making this display gorgeous!!

Each book was wrapped in either a metallic purple or metallic green wrapping paper. I cut out vines and flowers to put on the books, along with either a leaf or flower that gave a brief description of the book, genre, theme.

As with the last two attempts at this display I used similar signage to explain the display and how it worked. I numbered the back of each wrapped book and provided a signout sheet for students to checkout the books.

You can read more detailed instructions  in my first Blind Date post

Hope you liked this version of the display!

December: Library Scrabble Display

I came up with an idea to turn the game of Scrabble into an interactive library display. I wasn't sure if the display would be popular with my students but it turned out to be a total hit! Here is all the details so you can create a display of your own!

Before I explain each step, let me give you an overview of the scrabble "game" display. Each book was wrapped in a paper bag and had a scrabble tile taped to the front of the bag. Because the books were completely covered I wanted to give a couple of clues as to what the book was in the bag, in case a student wanted to check one out. I chose to use the first letter of the book title as the scrabble tile letter. For the point value of the scrabble letter I color coded it to represent one of 10 genres. I then created the different genres out of scrabble tiles, in their "color" and used those as decor. Any student could come up to the display, rearrange the scrabble tiles (books) into a word and then they would write that word on a clipboard that I provided next to the display. If the word had not already been used that day they got a cookie. The highest scoring word each day won a book. You could checkout one of the scrabble books, I provided numbers on the back of each scrabble book and a sign out sheet to allow students to check out the books. If you checked out a book you got to choose the next scrabble book that went on the display, and you got first dibs at spelling a new word, thus having an advantage and the best chance of getting the highest score that day.

How To:

Step 1: I complied a list of letters that could be used to spell the most amount of words. I repeated some letters, I tried to get a list of at least 34 books to begin my display and to have a back up of books (this will come in handy later). I then went through the stacks (I chose to only use fiction books) and found books that began with each letter.

Step 2: Using a guide I found online, that gave me the point value for each letter, I made up "Scrabble tiles" for each letter. Here are the ones I used, please feel free to use them:

You will notice the point value is color coded to match our 10 genres.

Step 3: I made up decor to allow students to easily identify the genres:

Step 4: I cut out the scrabble tiles and taped them to brown paper bags. I wrote a number on the back of each bag.

Step 5: I wrote the barcode of the book and the number on the bag that matched the book, on a spreadsheet, I then put the book in the bag.I put a signout sheet on the reference desk for students to write the number on the bag when checking out the book.

Step 6: I made up signs explaining how to play the game and how you would get a cookie for playing.

Step 7: I hung a sheet next to the display for students to write their words on:

Step 8: For the top of the display I made a Library Scrabble sign:

That's it! The display was a lot of fun, try it at your library!

October: It's A Mystery Display

October is National Mystery Month! There are several great ideas for mystery displays on Pinterest, Google and personal blogs, it's hard to pick just one! Our Library Advisory Board students had asked for more displays like Blind Date With A Book. They liked choosing books based on other facts besides the cover. I incorporated this idea into our new display, It's A Mystery.

Did you know that there are more than 8 types of sub-genres for mysteries? I did not. For this display I chose to focus on only five sub-genres: Historical, Crime, Thriller, Detective and Romantic. We Genrefied our fiction collection last year and it allowed me to pull reports on sub-genres very easily. I made five resource lists of books and printed them out. I made an excel spreadsheet of all the barcodes for each book and numbered them 1-27. A volunteer pulled the books and one of our Student Library Assistants put the books into brown paper bags, wrote the number I had given on the back of the bag, and kept them sorted into their five piles. This process took much less time than wrapping each book in paper like we did for the Blind Date With A Book display.

I created five different "logos" to represent each sub-genre. These were printed and cut out as decorations for the display.

Each "Logo" had a symbol to represent the sub-genre, I printed out these symbols and our student assistant glued the corresponding symbol to the correct pile of books. This was the only clue students got to know what book was in the bag.

I made a signout sheet so students could write the number on the back of the bag and their name to checkout the book. This way they remained completely in the dark about what book was inside the bag until after it was checked out.

I made signage explaining how to check out the book and put it on the display.

For decorations I used the "logos" I had made, along with text saying "It's A Mystery." I used question marks and the classic Who? What? Where? How? Why? When? and cut them out and put them around the display.

Overall it was not nearly as popular as the Blind Date With A Book display. I think it was too difficult for students to know what was in the bag and they shied away from checking them out. If I did it again I think I would include something like "If you like....." to the front of each bag and a better clue as to what is inside.  I have an idea for a Scrabble display using books that are wrapped, we will see if that is more popular.