The past week, I have been preparing the bulletin board for nationals. We decided that since we were going to travel half way across the country to present the board, we may as well make it better (and bigger). We decided to go from 20x30in to 24x36in. We are allowed up to 48in on each side, however to acquire foamcore board that large is extremely expensive, as well as getting the necessary prints. So we went to the maximum width that our printer allows.

I went to Michaels, and was disappointed to find out that the next size up of foam core was extremely large, and I had to get multiple sheets of it, so I ended up spending quite a bit of money on the the boards.

Nothing actually changed in the images, we just decided to make it larger, and do a better job of cutting out and gluing the pieces together. It took me two days to cut out, glue, and package the board up. Friday night, I glued the images to the board (I found that if you spray both surfaces and allow them to dry, they stick better). This took quite a bit of time, as we had to be careful to not ruin any of the images.

The next step was to cut out the individual pieces. I actually tried a bandsaw, but ended up not using it, as a surgical scalpel allowed me to be more precise.

Finally, we packaged up the board in multiple protective layers, to prevent it from being crushed in transit to Missouri. I used two bed sheets, and tons of corrugated cardboard to create the box.

Anyway, the promotional bulletin board is most likely in Lewiston, Idaho right now, getting ready to be shipped off in a few weeks.

–Scott

Last year, I was conned by Mike Mattson into helping present a speech regarding a Promotional Bulletin Board at SkillsUSA State. Our team happened to get second place. We were slightly disappointed that we were unable to go to Nationals. But when we got back to school we had an email telling us that first had dropped out and we were being allowed to go to Nationals in their place to represent Idaho. We didn’t so so well, but I decided that the next year, we would do great… so this year, my brother, Stephen Sturges, and I were on a team to design a new one, and with the knowledge of last year, we created a masterpiece bulletin board and wrote a great speech that gave us First place at state, and qualified us to go to Nationals in Kansas City, Missouri.

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