BETTER THAN SLICED BREAD

By now you've finished all of your experimentation, put together a professional quality display board and become the consummate public speaker for your project, right?

Hardly....

You've either just been through or getting ready to enter your school or city fair, you haven't quite finished all of your experiments and your display board has at most a title on it.

Two words. Spray Mount. If you already know what I'm talking about then this information isn't for you.

If you want to get a sheet of paper glued to your board or to a piece of card stock this is the stuff. If you've been to the fair before and seen the snazzy displays where everything is stuck down perfectly flat without bubbles, that's most likely what they used.

You can buy spray mount at any office or art supply store. If you want to stay out of trouble with your parents lay down lots and lots of newspaper, open every window and write your mom or dad a "greatest parent in the world" note.

Spray mount is super sticky stuff. It's also an aerosol and will make everything you spray near it just gross. But to get a nice even coat you want to be about a foot off the sheet you're spraying. Did I mention use lots of newspaper?

You don't need soak the paper with it. One good thin coat does the trick. Also, use a heavier weight paper than your usual printing paper for best results. It's much easier to deal with wet sticky heavy weight paper than thin-about-to-tear paper.

Wait! Don't start gluing yet. I know you're tired and you never want to see another project board again, but take a few minutes to map out your board. Nothing can be worse than putting a lot of things on it and finding out it won't all fit or that you have extra empty space on it. (For the latter case, slipping in an extra picture could save you).

Get a piece of scratch paper and trace out how everything will fit on your board. If you're not sure how long your discussion or your results are, print them out on the cheap paper (even the back of a piece of paper is fine). Make sure you take into account how much of a boarder you're going to have around each one. Leave yourself little pencil marks where everything will go.

You can buy a presentation board in more than just white or cardboard brown now. I've seen black, blue and yellow. (The yellow is super bright I wouldn't recommend it). All of the big office supply stores have them. They're fairly inexpensive as well. Some also have a separate piece that's already cut to be the title.

> What tricks have you come up with?