First Official TPT Milestone....What?

This past week I reached the first official milestone for TPT (only 11 months in!) and couldn't be more ecstatic.  I started this journey last April hoping to make a couple extra hundred dollars a month while subbing until I found a permanent teaching position.  Instead a few months into subbing, I realized my passion was more into creating products than it was of being in the classroom.  I'd come home from subbing and be eager to work on TPT and dread everyday I got called in.  I honestly felt like I was losing money everyday I wasn't working on TPT!  While I love working with kids and miss being in the classroom, the idea of my projects reaching thousands of students has been just as gratifying.  Everyday I wake up excited to work and create new projects and each day I wake up so thankful for Teachers Pay Teachers and the community of teachers on there that I have learned from.  I am also truly grateful for my fans and followers as you guys are always giving me ideas, asking for new things, sending me pictures of my projects, and continuing to purchase again and again.  It really can make a girl emotional, you know?  I definitely feel like I'm living the dream and want to send you all a big "THANK YOU!"

 

To celebrate this accomplishment my "Best Selling" Scuba Diver Cut and Paste is going to be free for an entire week (3/8-3/15)!  I have recently updated this product and given it what I call a mini-makeover.  If you have purchased this project previously, please make sure to download it as I adjusted some of the patterns to make them more user friendly.  I have also included two writing prompts so it's a great project for many age levels.

Now what some of you don't know about me, is that I previously worked as a Teacher's Assistant for 12 years.  I worked with ages all the way from birth to 12 years old and during that time I created projects just like the ones I sell for the classroom I was working in.  I also created more bulletin boards than I care to share! Haha.  Anyways, now that I am settled in the new house with my family and have a proper workspace I finally have a small space to create some "mini" bulletin boards of my own and hopefully give some inspirations to teachers making them in their own classroom whether it be at a school or home. So here's my first of many bulletin boards....

 To go along with my scuba diver I definitely needed to create a bulletin board that was ocean-worthy!  I started by stapling some yellow bulletin board paper at the top of my board.  Then I took my blue paper and created waves on it before I hung it up.  I then layered it slightly over the yellow paper and the rest of the board like so.

 I think every good bulletin board has trim around it.  In my opinion it really polishes it off.  For my bulletin board I made this trim using clip art from Graphics From the Pond (just love her stuff!).  I used Microsoft Publisher to do this and it was super easy!  I created a shape rectangle filled it in with yellow ( I was able to fit three pieces on a page), then added my clip art, printed, laminated, cut it out, and stapled it around my board.

I then place my scuba divers on my bulletin board and added a title to the top: Come Swim With First Grade!  Now obviously my scuba divers are quite large for this board so my recommendation to you if you have a small board is to reduce the size of them on a copier.  I always make my patterns large because it's way easier to scale them down than up!  By doing this you will be able to fit more on the board.  You could also use the scuba divers as an accent on the corner and then have your students do other ocean animals next to them that are smaller. 

Here's a close up of the scuba divers!

Be sure to grab this project here (free this week only!):

Scuba Diver Cut and Paste 

and if you are looking for more ocean animals check out my
Ocean Animal Cut and Paste Set
Thanks everyone! Time to work towards the next milestone :)