Banish Lamination Glare! Quickly and Easily!

I'm just not much of a DIYer.

I see ideas on Pinterest and pin the bejeezers out of them.

My mom and stepdad are inCREDible DIYers.

I'm a WANNAbe DIYer.

Ya know those Pinterest fails?

That's me.

EXCEPT with this!

It was QUICK!

It was EASY!

I'm swooning over the loveliness of Jen Jones' Chalkboard Alphabet over at her Hello Literacy store on TpT. It is gorgeous and the pack includes 150 pages of alphabet goodness, including a spelling dictionary and alphabet cards in multiple sizes.

But when I finished laminating it and put it up, the classroom lights hit it in a way that made it so full of glare that my firsties wouldn't really be able to see it. With something things it doesn't matter so much...but with this it did. So I looked into what I could do about it. And found out about clear spray paint with a matte finish.

So I tried it!

And it worked!

All I did was lay out the pieces on a whopper piece of cardboard from my school's receiving room. I set up just outside to avoid too much odor. It took about two minutes to spray the first coat. Then I waited a few minutes (five mn max) and spent another two minutes to spray the second coat. Then I waited a few more minutes and carried it back to my classroom.

The directions say that it dries to the touch in five minutes and it will be fully dry in 24 hours. It dried to the touch really quickly.

I started hanging it up...and one of my colleagues stopped in, saw what I was doing and mentioned that I was supposed to hang our Handwriting Without Tears alphabet.

Oops!

So I did hang the HWT up (and dropped the J card behind the Smartboard...in true-to-me-fashion) in the more prominent, student-viewing spot....and then hung this gorgeous set up as decoration on another wall.

I loved the results so much that I sprayed these guys down, too...(they were too bright for my now matte-needing eyes). Here's a picture before they were laminated....

Read, Write & Solve were all stapled up, so I took them down and sprayed them. LOVE the result.

Care was attached more securely to the mason block wall...and I didn't want to deal with taking it down. So...shhhhhhh....I sprayed it (one coat) while it was still on the wall. I held an open manila folder to the side with one hand and held the spray paint with the other hand and did a quick spray. It worked!

Pics to come soon. I was so kerfuffled about getting ready for my new crew of firsties' first day on Tuesday that I forgot to take the pictures! But if I don't post this post this weekend, I'll be sucked in to the B2S Transition Vortex and I'll never even remember that I wanted to share this with you guys.

Product Deets...
I used Rustoleum Matte Finish spray and it did have a bit of an odor, most noticed, but still not terrible, when I sprayed it inside my classroom...So for future projects I tracked down a Low Odor version from Krylon.

By the way...as you read this, I'm guessing you've sorta maybe thought that technically this is not really a DIY project. Thank you for not telling me that all I really did was spray laminate with a special finish to banish the glare. Which doesn't really constitute a DIY. You guys are the best!