I've decided to post what we did instead of responding to individual e-mails. I think this will work better. I am posting links to pics of some of the finished product also at the end.
A teacher brought this idea to us and while it sounded like a great idea, we have yet to find the person with the passion to run with this idea. I'm sure alot of our groups are alike in that we have grand ideas and not enough warm bodies to properly get them going. But we gave it a good try.
1) We got sheets of plywood donated by a local lumber store.
2) Volunteers, mostly our board's family and friends, cut out the shapes, sanded and primed them.
3) We offered two sizes, a 12" trout for $12, 20" for $20.
4) We sent home fliers and took orders for the fish. Our school office staff is awesome and they took in the orders for us.
5) Ideally, someone would have contacted every local business to buy these. I approached a few and sold one to every business owner I talked with, but I think that was only about 5.
6) We sold about 20 total.
7) PTA members voted to earmark this money for playground equipment, with 10% to go towards small stuff, like balls, jump ropes, hoola hoops, etc.
8) Once the cutout was purchased, the buyer was instructed to decorate it however they desired. Use the fish as a canvas, not neccessarily to paint it as a fish, but to just create to their heart's desire. One family decoupaged their fish with pictures of people fishing, that was very cool.
9) When finished decorating, they returned them to the office and the PTA polyurethaned them and attached to the chain link fencing around our playground.
10) We used a poly that is for wooden boats. Some of the fish have hung outside year round for two years and look great!
11) We attached to the fencing with U shaped nails.
12) We got donations of the primer just by asking people to check their basements and garages. We got about 6 cans filled at various levels. The local hardware store also sold us the poly at cost.
We want to push this and will include chairing this in our Three for Me program brochure we send home next fall. The possibilities are endless to use whatever your region is known for. One person who contacted me will use salmon, another wants to use their school mascot, a cougar. Play around with patterns. Ours came from a taxidermy book but we found other printable ones online using Google.
Here are the links to the pics I've posted on photobucket.
i18.photobucket.com/albums/b101/dbodeh/trouts01.jpg
i18.photobucket.com/albums/b101/dbodeh/trouts02.jpg
i18.photobucket.com/albums/b101/dbodeh/trouts03.jpg
