Competition Posters For our cheerleading competition, we wanted to make some great looking signs. For under $20, we were able to make these. You need a piece of foam board, posterboard in your school colors, and a pattern that you want to trace. We chose a star and then we traced it in pencil. You can cut the pattern out with scissors, but if your pattern has straight edges, you should use a straight edge and razor blade. Using the razor blade makes a nice clean cut. Be careful if you're using a sharp razor. We chose block letter stencils for our letters. They can then be cut out using a paper cutter. It makes it very straight. Once everything is cut out, lay it out to see where you want the letters positioned. We like to put mirror mounting tape under our letter to make them more 3D. Put several tape squares on the back of the letter. Make sure you are 100% sure of where you want your letters put, because once you stick them down, they aren't coming back up. We used a small pencil mark to define where we wanted to place the letter. You can invert your colors from front to back. We used purple as the main color on one side and gold on the other. This is the foam board base. The purple and gold poster board were glued onto it. This is to strengthen the poster and keep it from being bent. We cut notches for the hands. This makes it easier to hold & flip, and makes sure everybody holds the sign at the same place. Make sure you notch your posterboard so that it will line up with the foam board. Do this before you glue it to the board. Sometimes when you cut the board, it has a white inside. You can cover this up by running a marker in a matching color over the edge. We used a thick purple marker to cover up our white line. We used elmer's glue to glue the posterboard onto the foam board. After you put your line of glue on the poster, you should smooth it out with your finger so that it will lay flatter on the foamboard. Make sure you have a paper towel close by, since this is a little messy. While the sign is drying, you should put heavy books on the edges and the middle of the sign to make sure everything dries flat. Make sure when you glue you posterboard, you make one side upside down so that you can flip your signs. This is our finished set with all 3 signs.