Everyday I'm filing....

My favorite way to brighten up my classroom is spray paint.  It's cheap, easy to use, a little goes a long way and fool proof.  There are a lot of projects in my classroom I use it on.   My poor principal didn't quite know what to say when I asked him if I could spray paint my filing cabinet.  His first question was why on earth would I want to do this. Well Pinterest of course was my answer but then I would have to explain it to my boss so I just said because they will look so much better.

Here is the history of my filing cabinets.  My first one came with the room.  I'm pretty sure the person that was in my room would have taken it with them when they moved to their new room.  So I was pretty lucky to have one.  It's pretty awful and a blah blue color and the drawers don't really close all the way.  For about 2 years I was in desperate need of another one.  I finally "inherited" one from a teacher who got a better one.  This "new" one was electric banged up blue with lots of dents and dings and again drawers that don't close.  But it's a place to store files, folders and stay organized.  Making things cohesive makes me feel accomplished and very pleased with myself. 

Now on to spruce them up.  So our school colors are purple and white so I went with purple as a base.    I also recommend the spray attachment for the tops of the spray paint cans.  It really saves on the fingers if your going to be doing a ton of spray painting. 

 

 

So I don't have any pictures of the before but I do have the after.  Initially I was going to do some polka-dots or stars to jazz them up but instead I stuck with the school color things and went with paw prints since we are the wildcats.  My good friend Melissa actually inspired the whole paw print addition. Including the misty looking sprays and splotches throughout them was her idea too.  I adore them.  They are a great touch to the personality of my room.  It took the about one very sunny warm morning to do this.  They were put of my room by 9am and back in my 2pm.  My fantastic custodians helped with the move.  I removed the handles and sprayed them black and wiped the cabinets down while they were moving things.  This inspiration also started a spray paint revolution with 5 other teachers painting their cabinets too.  One did a white cabinet with florescent splatter paint, a couple did polka dots.  One of my co-workers even turned his into monsters! My superintendent likes to say that I'm personally responsible for the hole in the ozone over our school.   

 

 

Another tip for you is that you really should label your cabinet drawers. When I went to put the drawers back in it was a MESS!  Since they all matched and looked so cute I couldn't tell which ones went to which cabinet or which cabinet was which anyway.  IT took a lot of shuffling, for almost 2 days because I gave up on the first day for a while.    The drawers don't work any better but they sure look a lot better in my room!

One last tip: 

spray paint drifts.....all over, my face, legs, arms, hair, and obviously my feet were covered.  It can be difficult to get off your skin. Good thing Old Navy flip flops are 2 for $5!