Wall Quotes 4

We have now started a smaller quote on a pillar. The pillar is brick and so it is impossible to get straight lines, but we are hoping it will just have 'character'!

It says, 'I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library'. Jorge Luis Borges

Painting the banner - day 1 and 2

So the first step was priming the material with emulsion paint.
Then we tested the stencil and spray paint. Attempt one gave lots of blurring and spreading. Not good.

Attempt two we used pins to pin the stencil down, so that they were more secure and 'tighter' to the material. I also sprayed a lot finer. It was much improved.

This was the first word (chosen appropriately) and it took a while to pin. You can see the pins if you look closely.
We had a few mishaps. Spray paint seems to travel a whole lot further than you could ever imagine, and we had to repaint the material white in quite a few places.

I will take some pictures of the almost finished banner next week.

Getting lost in reading

The library isn't technically open, but a few of my student librarians asked to come up, and as they had done me a favour the day before I agreed.

A year 8 boy came up, browsed the shelves for 5 minutes, chose one and sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall. He passed up my beanbags and sofas, and even the normal working chairs, but I can understand that need to just sit with the book, where you discovered it.

He stayed there all lunch, I even forgot he was there.

It's so wonderful seeing students get lost in a book like that.

Wall Quote 3

I read because one life isn't enough and in the pages of a book I can be anybody.

Richard Peck.

Starting the banners

So, I have plans for massive banners to hang from my very high ceilings. They will have words on them, spray painted using stencils.

We got some students to rank a selection of words, from the best/strongest words to the weakest or 'most rubbish'.


These were their top words:
This was the bottom of their list:
We then got the students to have a go at laying out some potential stencils, just to get a more visual idea of what the banners would look like when finished. We just used purple paper, but the final product will be white material with shades of blue spray paint.
This idea was inspired by Skerricks and these photos here.

Wall Quote 2

I finished this quote today...well sort of.





An art teacher had done the outline, and had filled in up to the 'all the'. He has been off sick, and the teacher/sign-writer hasn't been up for ages, so I thought I'd be brave and give it a go myself.
I'm not a massive fan of heights, but once I once was up it was ok (if I didn't look down!).
I made one error, which you can't really see from the floor, and up close it all needs neatening up. Hopefully the signwriting teacher can just neaten the edges for us.

The school library facebook page

We now have 24 fans and it is being used. It is quite exciting to see students engaging with their own school from home. The students are responding to news that I publish in my status updates, and are suggesting things they want.

It is still early days, with only 24 students out of 1400, but the library isn't even open yet, and many of them don't even know where we are yet. But it is a positive start.

Jazzing up my new desk shelf

I managed to get a shelf made so taht my computer and bits and pieces wouldn't be on full show. As beautiful as it is, it is MDF, and so not super attractive.

I have a plan to decoupage the desk with words related to the library space (read, text, grow, journey, inspire etc).

I did a small tester with the help of a work experience student, and am now giving the whole thing a go.

This is layer one. Eventually there will be no wood showing at all. It doesn't look good now, you just have to have faith that it will come together with the extra layers. I am just using pva glue at the moment, but will have a nicer glaze for the top layer.

I had some wonderful student librarians cut out the words.