My daughter and I will be marching in a local parade this weekend and registering voters afterwards. We were contacted by the Obama campaign and encouraged to make homemade signs. The mantra seems to be "homemade is best!"
It turned out to be lots of fun to create our own posters and I thought I'd share the craft idea with other parents. Pictures below the fold!
My husband suggested a mosaic-type image that would be recognizable as Obama's main logo, but obviously hand-made. Fortunately, we had lots of foamie sheets in our craft bin and even had enough of the right colors. We cut the sheets into strips, stacked them and then cut out 'squares'. They don't have to be exactly the same size and, in fact, it helps with the piecing together if you have some that are slightly smaller or larger.
Next, we used a piece of string and pencil to describe the large circle and then the smaller half-circle inside. The stripes were done freehand. Once you have your pencil marks, start glueing! We used Goop(tm), just a dab in the center of each square, and it seemed to work wonderfully well.
Here's the finished poster close-up:
And here it is from slightly farther away:
As you can see...accuracy laying down the 'tiles' isn't necessary and from a side-of-the-road-parade-distance it should look pretty good!
I haven't used this mosaic technique with foamies before, but I'm rather pleased with how easy it was. And because the foamies are so light, the poster isn't too heavy to carry during a parade. And this is all thanks to having only light blue poster board on hand with no markers that marked well on it! (Except for black and that's just boring...)
Happy crafting and post pictures if you make posters, too!