Librarian on Display: creative displays

Showing posts with label creative displays. Show all posts

Monday, December 1, 2014

December: Star of Wonder, Star of Night Display

This year for one of our winter themed display I chose to do a star theme. I called the display "Star of Wonder, Star of Night." This display was one of my first attempts at using our new Silhouette Cameo machine that was recently donated by a library parent volunteer. The Silhouette is amazing and I can create all kinds of projects. For this display I drew up two designs in Illustrator and then brought them into Photoshop where I saved them as .pngs. We did not do the software upgrade to the Designer software on the Silhouette, but I have learned some easy work arounds to create basically any design I want in the Silhouette Studio.

For those of you who have a Silhouette or other paper cutting machine, here are the two png images, please feel free to use them:

If you bring them into the Silhouette Studio you can use the select trace area and then uncheck high pass filter to make this a cut file.

For the books on display I chose every book that we had with star, shine, night.... in the title.

For the rest of the decor I found star images on Pinterest and made them into cut files. I also made some 3D stars from old book pages using a tutorial I found on House Revivals

That's about all there is to it!

Thursday, June 19, 2014

June: Books Into Movies Display

Book Into Movies Display! There are several YA books being turned into movies this year. This is a perfect opportunity to gain student interest. The last two years we have made a books into movies display that features all recently released as well as upcoming movies. Playing off of the popular "Call Me Maybe" song I created signage for the display, the keywords I made pink and the rest I left black. I also backed each word with a colored piece of construction paper:

To entice the students even further I created a QR code that links to the movies trailer. Each book, that has a trailer available, showcases a QR code on the front cover. Here are some of the codes (you may want to check to see the links are still active):

I then created signs to display on the shelves. The first sign just told gave the display title along with some movie posters:

The second sign gave the title and explained about the QR codes:

The third sign I made smaller 5" x 7" and it was just a common saying that I am constantly saying/hearing:

On the lower shelves of the display I put books that were being turned into movies, yet their trailers were not released yet. I called these "coming soon":

I also added stars to the coming soon books with their projected movie release date:

The display is a lot of fun, please feel free to use any of the signage/ QR codes.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

May: Steampunk and Inventors / Inventions Display

Did you know that May is National Inventors' Month? I had no idea (apparently it was just moved from August to May, you can read more about it here). I was trying to find something cool to display during the first two weeks of May and I luckily found out about National Inventors' Month, which gave me an awesome excuse to create a STEAMPUNK display!!

I have been wanting to do a steampunk display for a very long time, but we never seemed to have enough steampunk genre books to complete the display. Recently I have noticed that we were purchasing more steampunk books for the Upper School and the Middle School has always had a ton. I asked the Middle School Librarian if I could borrow five books for the display and she graciously said yes! Finally I had enough books to create an amazing display!

With the help of our parent volunteers and out student volunteers I created three displays. One is focused just on steampunk. The second is focused on books that cover a broad range of inventions through the years, or focuses entirely on a countries inventions.... nothing too specific. The third display was books that focused on specific inventors and/or inventions. The National Inventors' Month theme really inspired me to tie inventions in with steampunk and I could not be happier with the results.

For the decor I drew up a bunch of gears. I chose a different color theme for each bookcase/display. Steampunk had silver, browns and blacks. Broad inventions were dark purple, blue and burgundy. Specific inventions/inventors was hot pink, lime green, blue, yellow... (I really liked how the traditional steampunk with silvers and browns turned out the best).

Here are some templates of gears if you want to create your own (Our student volunteers were so helpful with cutting these out).

I then created two signs, one for the steampunk display and one that I printed out twice and used for each of the other displays (I would have made separate signs for each display but it was a lot of work and I ran out of time).

I placed the gears in groups throughout the display, I tried my best to match gears up so they looked more legit.

That is all there is to it. I hope you like the display. There are so many examples of steampunk displays out there, I found a lot on pinterest! Please feel free to use any of my signs/templates!

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

April: Earth Day Display

April 22nd was Earth Day and the library created two displays to highlight the libraries "Earth Day" inspired books.

The display was really quick to put together. After the last week celebrating National Library Week and all the events we held, there was not much time to put together a huge display. I created two signs for the displays, one for each book case. They are really simple:

I then cut out some clouds, butterflies and snails and decorated the bookcase with them:

That's all there was to it, please feel free to use the signs or template.

Monday, April 14, 2014

April: Book Spine Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, to celebrate we have created a book spine poetry display. This is our second year creating this display and it has only grown in popularity with our students. Last year we dedicated one bookcase to the display and by the end of the two week display period we had piles of books sitting on nearby tables because they wouldn't fit in the bookcase. This year we dedicated two bookcases to the display, it has been up for one week so far and we only have two spots left for poems, crazy!

The first time we created the display none of the students had ever heard of book spine poetry before. I wanted to encourage them to give it a try and also show examples of what a book spine poem was. I accomplished this in three ways. First I created a book spine poetry board on our library pinterest page. I then created a sign that said "need inspiration?" and I provided a QR code that would take you to the book spine poetry examples.:

Second I made fake books out of construction paper and then I wrote titles of books on them and stacked them to make fake poems. I taped these fake books to the back of the bookcase shelves, it was a great way to show examples while leaving the shelves clear for the students work.

The third thing I did was make small quote bubbles that said things like "place your poem here", "Create a poem", "Your poem goes here".... Just another way to encourage the students. I unfortunately did not save the quote bubbles with the text in it, but I did save the blank ones. You can open these in Paint and write your own words of encouragement:

Once a student created a poem they would put their name on it. I made small pockets out of construction paper and put a note on it saying "Name cards" and then in some of the quote bubbles I wrote "don't forget to add your name," I then made some note cards for them to write their names on and then place the card on top of the poem.