I Have a Love Affair with Office Max Pin It Now!

I'll reveal an embarrassing fact about myself.  The people that work at the print counter at Office Max know me. I'm mean really know me. I coached the new guy on how to find the right barcode in his binder, so I could check out the last time I went.  (Yesterday.)  As in, they even recognize my husband because I send him over there a bunch to pick stuff up for me.  (I have a nice husband.)  I'm at the print counter at Office Max waaaaaay too often.

Here's the thing, though. You know how you see a poster at the teacher store, and it's almost what you want? And you're thinking to yourself, "Gosh, if it just said _____________ instead, it would be perfect!"  This happens to me often, especially with writing.  We use Lucy Calkins' Units of Study for writing, and let me tell you, there are no Lucy Calkins teaching posters at Lakeshore.  Yes, I could make it on chart paper. But I can't. Because I expect my posters to look like this:


I Do, We Do, You Do                                  The First Grade Parade


Working for the Classroom                          The Inspired Apple

And they never do. Ever. So what's an OCD girl to do but make them herself on the computer? If you have the newest version of Word, you can do some snazzy stuff. Check out this post I read on Teaching Blog Addict that tells how to use Word to make a blog button:  Blog Button in 3 Tutorials.  You can make some good looking graphic work. I didn't know about all this business in the newest Word, but I do have Printshop. I even recently downloaded Photoshop Elements. I love it, but it's a bit of a time commitment to figure it out.  So go create your 11x17 file in one of these programs and get to the next step.

Moving right along. At Office Max or Office Depot, you can upload a file to their website (or bring in a flash drive), and they'll print out an 11x17 color poster on nice, glossy card stock for you. For less than $2. Seriously.

It works like this:

After that, you put in your name/number/etc. and then select which store you want to pick it up from.  Office Depot's process works EXACTLY the same, except you also have the option to pay online.  I'm sure Staples has something similar.  Sadly, no Staples near me.

Try it out for yourself! Here are two posters I've made:
Plot Poster
Love
**To download, click on the name of the file (shown above the image).  The link will open and just click download.  Voila!


Happy poster making!

Want more freebies from teachers all over blogland?  I'm linking this post up with: