Shortage of $$ = Creativity

What do you do when you find out last-minute that a vital piece of material for a project is not an option because it costs too much? You get creative (like any good farmer/teacher knows).

I was planning on starting a project with my 8th graders today and went into the school office this morning to see if the cheap black frames I had ordered had come in yet. To my surprise they weren't even ordered because they apparently went up in price sometime between when I requisitioned them and when they were about to be ordered. Never good.

I had to scramble to come up with a solution but I'm pretty proud of what I accomplished with the materials I had available in my art room.

 

Step 1: Cut a frame out of poster board that is the desired size.

Step 2: Wrap that frame with plaster strips to reinforce and harden it.

 Step 3: Since I also don't have the money to purchase fancy letters, I printed the font I liked at the desired size, traced it onto poster board and then wrapped it with plaster as well.

 This is just a quick indication of what the goal is for the project.

 Step 4: To provide the frame with additional structure, I hot glued craft sticks around the edges of it.

 Step 5: Then I taped another frame of the same size to the back side of the original frame.

Step 6: I will wrap the entire frame with plaster strips and they will dry to hopefully give me a hollow, but somewhat hard, frame.

Step 7: I will spray paint it a gloss black and then continue working on what will be displayed inside of the frame.

So, for now, I think I have the problem solved. I'm sure another set of problems will come up tomorrow though. Gotta roll with the punches ;-)