make waves @ your library

*warning:  lots of library content in this post!  apologies to my non-children’s-librarian readers!*

a few weeks ago, we had the annual summer library program meeting where lots of children’s librarians from the area get together to talk about our ideas for the upcoming summer library program.  next year’s theme is “water” and i agreed to put together a few decorating ideas to share.  well, life here has been crazy (more about that in another post) so i ended up bringing along only one original idea and the rest of the ideas were borrowed (with permission) from terry ehle of the two rivers public library who presented at the wla conference.  her ideas are so inspiring!  you can see photos of past summer decorations at their library on their flickr page.

i didn’t even have time to represent all of her ideas, so i just picked my favorites.  one of her table display ideas was about oceans and she cut these great squiggly shapes from construction paper and stapled them into circles so that they would stand up on their own.  then, she grouped them together all over the table and tucked books in among the coral reef.  i thought it might be difficult to make good looking coral, but it’s pretty much the same thing as free-motion stippling.  :)  i actually just drew the lines and had a library volunteer do the cutting for me.  terry also had the great idea to sprinkle clear flat glass marbles all over the table to look like foam/bubbles on top of the water.

then there was this awesome octopus.  terry’s basic decorating theories seem to be “big, splashy, 3-d and, if possible, mostly free” so this octopus is made from paper (hers had painted eyes, mine are made from paper), wire (inside the legs to make them pose-able), staples, and then the whole thing envelopes one of those large acrylic poster holders for support.  so cute, so easy.

in the background of the above photo, you can also see my one “original” idea — cut out lots of drop shapes from a variety of blueish papers (you can either cut them freehand (or have a volunteer do that) or i think there’s a drop-shaped die available that you might be able to use) and sew them together in a big string using a sewing machine straight stitch and leaving a little space between each drop.  i also made a strand with fabric drops and found that the stiffness of the paper made it much easier to sew the paper ones.  these strands can be arranged into shapes (like the spiral above) or hung in shorter strands from a doorframe like a beaded curtain.  it would also be fun to have a bunch of them “dripping” out of a giant water faucet…. hmmmm…. i’m still getting inspired!

terry also had a pond display with cattails instead of coral.  the cattails are made from wooden skewers (i think i’ll try to find longer skewers for my next display attempt) and pieces of foam insulation thingies i found by wandering the aisles at the hardware store.  i also tucked little clip art fish into the reeds.  i added yarn and river stones for texture on this table.

although i didn’t put any other ideas together for this workshop (we only had about 45 minutes to set up before the event began), i’ve got great ideas for decorating for pirates too.

now the tricky part…. deciding which direction to go for my own library next summer…. saltwater, freshwater or arrgh, matey?