Are you looking for Creative Border Trim Ideas for Bulletin Boards? If you want your classroom bulletin board to stand out, a creative hand-made border trim would make it unique and memorable. Teachers can use vines, ruffled ribbon, kite paper garlands, wired ribbon, tissue flowers, tulle, and burlap ribbon.

You can think of these examples as border trim alternatives, since most bulletin boards have the standard straight or scalloped trims. Teachers use these kinds of bulletin board border trims to make their classroom more ‘homey’ and welcoming. They also add some texture and 3D intrigue to your classroom walls.

I love to find awesome creative border trim Ideas for bulletin boards. As an Amazon affiliate, I may earn a commission for purchases using my links. The ideas below are based on Amazon finds that are great for making your own DIY bulletin board border decorations as border trim alternatives.

Border Trim Ideas for Bulletin Boards

Vines as Borders: Run plastic vines around your bulletin boards to make them stand out. They are great for a woodland theme, jungle theme or tropical forest theme. Teachers also like to run them along their whiteboards with string lights. You can also use twisted up sheets of brown paper to make a thick vine border and add tissue paper flowers to complete the look.

Ruffled brown paper or ruffled fabric: For a shabby-chic look, gather up strips of brown paper or fabric and gently crimp them up and staple them down as you go along the border of your bulletin board. You can also use ruffled burlap ribbon or roll up some straight burlap ribbon or strips of brown paper.

Bunched up sheets of kite paper: Kite paper is soft and translucent. Bunch it up and staple it on your bulletin board but they don’t meet up end to end. Leave out a little piece before you staple, then after you staple at the staple points, fluff out the ends into flowers like tissue pompoms.

Wired ribbon: You know the decorative ribbons that come on a roll, and they have a fine wire embedded along both sides? These ribbons are used a bulletin board borders because the wire in them makes it easy to bend and mold them into beautiful ripples around your border.

Bunched tulle: Tulle comes in rolls that you can bunch up and staple along your bulletin board. I like to see two colors used together, but one color is pretty too.

Make border of colorful translucent paper strips: I call this paper ‘kite paper‘ but you might call it tissue paper. Different colors are cut into strips for the border trim. You can put down lines on hot glue along the border, and press in the strips. Keep doing this in layers to get it as fluffy as you want.

Layer different border trims: Regular bulletin board border trims are usually straight or scalloped. Teachers usually use more than one border trims, offset from each other, to have contrasting border trim colors. The layered look makes the two-dimensional border trims more interesting.

Use string lights: String ligts can be used as bulletin board borders. See examples of these in this blog post about string lights in the classroom.

Did you know that there are magnetic border trims for whiteboards? It’s a new thing that is becomming very popular! Read about it here. They come in so many colors and patterns.

I hope this blog post has helped you find border trim ideas for bulletin boards. Have you discovered a new way to make your own bulletin board borders? If you have, please share about it in the comments. Teachers think up the most creative bulletin board ideas.

By the way, for making your bulletin boards stay up on cinder block walls, I have some helpful tips in this blog post.