Therion
07-01-2007, 09:08 PM
My local group with my former highschool friends is small: we have 3-4 people. Still, we manage to accomplish a lot even with so few. Over the last two weeks we've been making signs for Ron Paul. I've written this report so that others can learn from our successes and failures.
Last week we bought materials. Originally we planned on getting some sort of tarp, and we checked art stores and Home Depot but couldn't find anything durable enough. Checking through all of our options, we ultimately decided on plywood. We bought 3 4'x8' sheets for $10 each, which we cut in half, giving us 6 4'x4' sheets for $5 each. This was a little expensive, and later we found out that we could just use cardboard. If you're going for quantity over quality (which you should), then get as much cardboard as possible out of dumpsters or whatever. Once it's painted then it will look about the same. You should be donating money to the campaign, not wasting it on materials. We also picked up stencils that were 4" high and some black spraypaint.
Today we actually constructed the signs. We found 2 more pieces of wood in dumpster (who would throw this stuff away?), one 4'x5' and another 4'x8'. We painted all of these, using about half a gallon of acrylic white enamel. This went really fast with four people, and we only needed one coat for the plywood.
We had some trouble with the stencils. 4" isn't tall enough, we need at least 6" stencils. We ended up printing off 8" letters on the computer and cutting out new stencils onto pizza boxes. They ended up looking really nice, but the problem was that each letter was individual. That meant that every time we spray painted a letter we had to cover the area around it with newspaper, and still we got a lot spilling over. That spraypaint will go into even the smallest crevice, and some will even go through a single sheet of newspaper. Doing it over, we would have made one big stencil with the entire message (Ron Paul 2008!) instead of individual letters.
So we ended up with 7 signs finished, and the big sign we plan on freehanding tomorrow. We're going to hang them up on overpasses July 3rd by drilling out the corners and hanging them up with twist ties. Also we're going to make 1,000 copies of this flyer (http://www.micahnelson.com/bandw.pdf), which will cost about $100. Then we'll go out in force with some staple guns, and there won't be a telephone poll within a five mile radius wanting for a Ron Paul sign.
Last week we bought materials. Originally we planned on getting some sort of tarp, and we checked art stores and Home Depot but couldn't find anything durable enough. Checking through all of our options, we ultimately decided on plywood. We bought 3 4'x8' sheets for $10 each, which we cut in half, giving us 6 4'x4' sheets for $5 each. This was a little expensive, and later we found out that we could just use cardboard. If you're going for quantity over quality (which you should), then get as much cardboard as possible out of dumpsters or whatever. Once it's painted then it will look about the same. You should be donating money to the campaign, not wasting it on materials. We also picked up stencils that were 4" high and some black spraypaint.
Today we actually constructed the signs. We found 2 more pieces of wood in dumpster (who would throw this stuff away?), one 4'x5' and another 4'x8'. We painted all of these, using about half a gallon of acrylic white enamel. This went really fast with four people, and we only needed one coat for the plywood.
We had some trouble with the stencils. 4" isn't tall enough, we need at least 6" stencils. We ended up printing off 8" letters on the computer and cutting out new stencils onto pizza boxes. They ended up looking really nice, but the problem was that each letter was individual. That meant that every time we spray painted a letter we had to cover the area around it with newspaper, and still we got a lot spilling over. That spraypaint will go into even the smallest crevice, and some will even go through a single sheet of newspaper. Doing it over, we would have made one big stencil with the entire message (Ron Paul 2008!) instead of individual letters.
So we ended up with 7 signs finished, and the big sign we plan on freehanding tomorrow. We're going to hang them up on overpasses July 3rd by drilling out the corners and hanging them up with twist ties. Also we're going to make 1,000 copies of this flyer (http://www.micahnelson.com/bandw.pdf), which will cost about $100. Then we'll go out in force with some staple guns, and there won't be a telephone poll within a five mile radius wanting for a Ron Paul sign.