If you are like our family, during the school year your children probably spend more time at school than at home. With team practices and early morning classes starting as early as 6 am and activities going until 7 pm at times, I feel like my children interact more with their teachers, coaches and friends than me. That is why I try to help my children have a locker that they can look at and immediately feel the warmth of home and not the cold, barren, abyss that a locker full of books can become.
Six Tips To Designing School Lockers
Try these 6 tips with your kid to glamorize their locker while still reminding them of the warmth and support of home:
1. Get Organized. The school year may start off neat, tidy, and organized, but it can fade fast without the help of organizational tools within high-traffic places- like your child’s locker.
Add some real functionality to those big open locker spaces by adding a basket to sit on the locker shelf to keep books, binders, and other school essentials in view and organized.
2. Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall. Shopping around and finding a mirror with special detail or clever design that your child likes will really add to the much-needed locker decor. Make sure that your child has a way to securely fasten the mirror to their personal space, otherwise it might fall off when the locker is opened, causing an unfortunate glass mess in the school hall.
3. Magnetize It. Since locker space may be limited, combine photos with magnets to make the most of the space by creating photo or digital scrapbooking magnets! Have your child choose their favorite friend and family photos, edit the photos (remove digital flaws like red eye or unnecessary shadows), and convert them into photo or digital scrapbooking magnets to use inside their lockers! Add photo detail by adding text- like names, dates, or places directly on the photo in fun, funky fonts. You can make photo magnets by printing them through an online printing company. These special magnets will add warmth to their locker space and can be used to hold notes or little paper reminders.
Ps. Want to learn more about creating photo magnets? Read this blog for more info: 4 Easy Steps to Making Your Own Summer Vacation Photo Magnets and TOMORROW’S BLOG will also feature back-to-school digital scrapbooking magnet instructions, so be sure to check-in then!
4. Create a Special Note Holder. Before school starts, it’s a fun back-to-school activity to take a pocket off of an old pair of jeans and decorate it with puff paint or sew on a few cute buttons and write their name on it. Let them use their imagination or do it for them as a surprise. Then put magnets in the corners on the back of the pockets, and then it can be used to store special notes in their locker.
5. Design Your Own Locker Digital Scrapbooking Wallpaper. Just as you might decorate a room with wallpaper, add some “wall” design to the interior or your child’s locker! Of course you couldn’t use regular wallpaper as the school probably wouldn’t allow that! So, instead use digital scrapbooking pages for interior design and hang them up with magnets that can make easy removal at the end of the school year! Digitally scrap favorite photos of your child’s best friends, pets, summer vacations, and family with digital supplies in colors and patterns that they like to create personalized locker-paper! This is just another way to include friendly faces of people that love them, as well as add a little warmth and design to an otherwise cold, steel locker!
Get your child involved, and let them pick out their favorite photos and digital supplies, and scrap their own adorable locker paper. If you know the lockers’ dimensions, try to format your digital scrapbooking projects to match the width of the locker, and use several coordinating digitally scrapped pages to match the length. If you don’t know the dimensions, it’s okay, just guess and use scissors as needed. Add some magnets to the back of the digitally scrapped pages and whaa-laa! Adorable locker paper has turned a boring locker into “locker-chic!”
Leave some space on the digital scrapbooking page and tell your child that they can add even more personalization by asking their friends to write sweet messages or draw pictures on the locker paper whenever they open the locker. This might be fun for your child’s friends to doodle on the locker paper and be creative, without causing real damage or adding real graffiti to the locker!
Ps. I remind my kids to include their favorite motivational quotes on their locker digital scrapbooking wallpaper to inspire and encourage them on tough school days or keep focused on important test days. Kids love to write messages and put personal quotes and pictures that motivate them to work hard or be happy.
I also make sure to offer a few of my own favorite quotes to help my kids remember what I expect of them while they are away, such as, ”If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not falling down, but staying down.” – Mary Pickford
Also, at the end of the year you might have your child bring home all the digitally scrapped locker pages, magnets, and other school locker mementos and put them in an album with photos of that school year as a special school memory book for that year! Over a couple of years of this you and your child will have some priceless memories of their school days!
Anyway, try some of these fun locker tips this new school year! Get your kids excited for this upcoming school year, help them get motivated about adding a little creative design to their school locker!
Don’t forget to check TOMORROW’S BLOG that will feature back-to-school digital scrapbooking magnet instructions, so be sure to check-in then!
Happy scrapping & have a happy new school year too!
-Denise
If you’re not sure how to start Digital Scrapbooking, then start with Digital Scrapbooks and More’s Beginner training- the Getting Started Series! The Getting Started Series for Photoshop or the Getting Started Series for Photoshop Elements is the best-selling Digital Scrapbooking Training and makes learning digital scrapbooking super-easy and always fun!
Learn how to save and print digital scrapbooking projects and send them to an online printing company (like photo magnets), or learn how to edit your photos and make good photos look even better!
————
Do you have great back to school tips you would like to share with us?
If so, please sign in and submit your comment to this blog post.
( Not sure how to leave a comment on our blog? Need help registering? To get help – click here for Comments Help and click here for Registration Help )
