How to Make Your Own Dry Erase Board

The Campus Activities Committee has committed this year to providing at least one event per month in which people can bring in something that they no longer want and re-purpose it creatively into something useful.  It's our way of educating and promoting a more environmentally-friendly attitude. 

I alluded to this concept  in last week's post, but I wanted to elaborate and share some of our ideas for upcoming repurposing events.

We're kind of going with a "Make & Take" theme, cause it's catchy and we like to be cute.  Our first event revolved around taking old picture frames and turning them into Dry Erase Boards.  Here's how it works:

1.  Take an old photo frame and remove the picture / artwork inside.

 2.  Pick out a festive colored scrapbook paper and cut it down to size. In this case, I used 12x12 scrapbook paper and cut it down to 8x10 inches.

3.  Place the scrapbook paper in the frame and close it back up.  If you are making a menu-planning board, here is where you add stickers or letters for each day, Monday through Friday or Monday through Sunday. 

4.  I decided to leave my board unpainted, but this is the point that you can paint your frame (just use any acrylic paint and a foam brush).

5.  Embellish your frame however you want it.  I used felt flowers.  Then grab a dry erase marker and you're done!

Bonus hint:  We purchased some frames from Goodwill to repurpose for this event and found that Goodwill is in the habit of marking "99 cents" in PERMANENT Marker on the glass of the frame.

Good news is, it's super easy to get permanent marker off of glass or dry-erase board.  Just write over the permanent marker with dry-erase marker.  It'll wipe right off.  I don't know how it works.  Magic, probably.

Here are some other examples of fabulous Dry-Erase Boards:

There you have it.  Virtually a free way to create something you need out of a few things you don't want!