Everything you need to make one homecoming proposal poster, in a single order. Most of it is under $15, and the two things people skimp on — the board and the markers — are the two that decide whether it looks good in the photo.
Get foam board, not posterboard. The 3/16-inch foam core holds itself rigid when you lift it over your head in a hallway, while thin posterboard bends and creases the moment you carry it out of the car. Twenty by thirty inches is the size that fills a phone photo and still fits across a back seat. Two boards in the pack is the right count - the first one is where you find out your letters were too big. The surface is acid-free and smooth, so paint pen sits on top of it instead of bleeding through to the back.
See on Amazon →This is the one place worth spending real money. Sharpies streak on foam board and go half-transparent over a second coat; POSCA lays down opaque water-based acrylic that still reads as solid color from across a gym. The reversible 1.8-2.5mm tip does outline and fill, so you don't need a second set for thick strokes. Shake the barrel, then press the tip down on scrap paper a few times until the paint flows before you touch the board. Eight colors, and the white actually shows up on dark board - which is the reason most people buy these in the first place.
See on Amazon →For anyone whose handwriting falls apart after the third word. These are peel-and-stick vinyl capitals at four inches tall - big enough to read in a photo, small enough that a full sentence still fits on a 20 x 30 board. Lay the entire phrase out dry before you peel a single one; spacing is where stick-on letters go wrong, not the letters themselves. Count your vowels before you start, because cheap alphabet packs run short on E, A and S halfway through a word. This set gives you 145 pieces across 20 sheets, so there's slack to redo a line.
See on Amazon →Extra fine grade, in shaker jars - the format that doesn't end with glitter tracked across the kitchen floor. Write the word in glue first, shake the glitter over the wet line, then stand the board up and tap the back; the excess falls off and leaves a clean edge instead of a fuzzy one. Twenty-four colors means you can actually match school colors rather than settling for generic silver. Skip the chunky craft glitter for lettering - the fine grade packs into the stroke and fills it evenly, where the big flakes leave gaps you can see from a few feet away.
See on Amazon →For mounting photos, cut-out letters and any paper shape you want to sit flat. Glue sticks curl the corners and school glue wrinkles the paper as it dries; double-sided tape holds it flat and stays invisible under the edge. Run a strip down each side of a photo rather than one blob in the middle - that's what stops the corners lifting by the time you carry it into school. It's photo-safe, so if you're using a real printed picture of the two of you, you aren't ruining the print. Buy the permanent version, not the removable one, which is a different roll in the same size.
See on Amazon →This is what you use for anything with thickness: the candy bar, the small balloon, the bag of Sour Patch that makes the pun land. Each dot is a pressure-sensitive adhesive circle that grips a couple of ounces without a hot glue gun and without melting a crater into foam board. Press the object on hard for a few seconds - people under-press these and then blame the dots. Two hundred to a roll, which outlasts one poster by a long way. Get the craft or permanent grade for anything you want to stay put; the removable grade is for laying out your design and repositioning it.
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