5 Easy Steps - How To Make a Tarp-Papel

Here are a few easy steps on how to make a good-looking tarpapel for your visual aids and poster designs.

Classroom teachers in the Philippines, and even around the world, are usually spending a lot of money for visual aids, posters, bulletin board designs and announcements, and that ever popular, tarpaulin designs. We use them to display whatever we want.

But the ingenuity of teachers have yet to come. A trend in both Public and Private Schools in the Philippines today, is what they call a do-it-yourself visual aid that is cheap, looks okay, recyclable and can be used in a classroom with a lot of students. “Cheap” caught your attention right? Then, keep reading as I teach you how to make a tarpapel and impress your students and maybe even co-teachers.

The word “Tarp-Papel” came from the first four letters of Tarpaulin, which is a common advertising and poster graphics printing material which costs 72% more, and takes 79% longer to make and print, than creating of a tarpapels. Unlike a poster or visual aid printed on a tarpaulin, tarpapels are printed on several pieces of paper, thus blended with the word “Papel” which is a Filipino term for paper. The papers are blanketed on each other and patched up like a jigsaw puzzle with tape, glue or whatever adhesive you have. When you look at it at a distance, when done just right and designed just well enough, it looks like the design was printed on a tarpaulin. A cheap, DIY visual aid for teachers and speakers. Follow these simple steps so you can create your tarpapel without encountering trial and error methods.

How To Make Your Own Tarpapel

What You Need:

• A Computer with Microsoft Word Installed (or any word processing software like OpenOffice) - To make the graphic design or visual aid
• A Printer – To print your work
• Several Pieces of Paper – So the printer has somewhere to print your work on
• An Imaginative Mind and a Pinch of Patience

5 Easy Steps on How To Make A Tarpapel

Here are some simple guides and tips on how to create an amazing tarpapel.

Step 1:

Open Microsoft Word.

Step 2:

Click on Page Layout to set your desired page orientation, the size of your paper, margins and other settings you want to customize according to your needs.

Whatever your design looks like on that 1 page, that will be the final look when converted to tarpapel, so don't set it up to a large size yet.

Step 3:

Start typing your texts, adding styles and formatting along the way. Be creative! Creativity cannot be taught.

Use the appropriate Font style and Font Sizes for your text. Use media like charts, shapes, pictures, tables and other objects.

Another method you can do is use Adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw or any other editing software to create your design. When done, save it as an image file, then drag it on Microsoft Word and resize appropriately.

Step 4:

Save your work. Click on File -> Save/Save As. You don’t want to lose your precious work because of a power blackout or someone tripping over and spilling coffee on your computer.

Step 5: Print your work.

I’ve tested this on an Epson Printer Series, but you can use any printer that you have around. Depending on your printer, this should work almost all the time.

To print your work, go to File -> Print -> Printer Properties

Go to Multipage and select your desired size, in this example I have selected 3x3. This will print my work on 9 pages, 1 part at a time. Like puzzle pieces!

Click Printer Properties to search for Multi-Page button.

At Printer Properties, check the Multi-Page to select printing style like 2-up, 4-up, 2x1, 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, depending what size you need.

Here is a screenshot for the Kyocera Eco-Sys Printer and Epson Printer Series.

Do not be afraid of technology, experiment on these things and I know you will make the best tarpapel of your own.

Send me samples of your printed work (and if you have questions) at technologyphilippines@gmail.com and I will showcase them on another blog post here at our website and give you proper credit. Looking forward to seeing them!