a new chalkboard

Apr 2, 2013

I am kind of really tired of all these dreary posts, so here is a cheerful one. Mikelle and my mama were here visiting last week and boy howdy, did we have fun! On Thursday we spent the whole day craft store shopping. First we went to Mini-Bazaar to check out their new spring arrivals and I fell in love with a red chalkboard…as in, I MUST HAVE IT RIGHT THIS MINUTE fell in love. Do you ever do that? See something and want it so badly? Well, I do. I saw it and wanted it, but was absolutely not willing to spend $47 to buy it.

So I stared at it.

And went back to look at it several times.

Finally, my mom looked at it and said we could make it so easily. Me, being completely craft challenged didn’t really believe her, but jumped at the chance to put her crafty skills to work.

We ran over to DI, a local thrift store, and bought an absolutely ugly, pink framed picture with a nice wooden frame for $6.00. Wahoo! First mission accomplished. Then we ran to Home Depot to get some MDF and chalkboard paint, but instead we found some MDF that was already turned into a chalkboard. Mom quickly had the cutting crew sawing it to the right dimensions and out the door we went with a perfectly fitting piece of chalkboard for our new frame.

Now all we had to do was find the right color of red paint. Not too bright, not to dark. After looking at twenty plus shades, we picked out the one we thought would go best with all the other reds in my house.

We (and be “we” I mean mom) sanded the frame down, primed it, let it dry, then painted it with two coats of red. But I didn’t like it. I thought it was too bright. So Mikelle tried to mix some red with a teensy-tinesy bit of black, but it didn’t turn out right either. Mom wasn’t too happy with our experimenting and said we were going to ruin it, but we kept trying to solve the problem. Finally Mikelle decided to put black right on to the painted frame and have me immediately wipe it off to antique it.

It worked! I love it! I can’t wait to get some chalk markers and have Blythe sketch us something lovely every week. After reading gobs of reviews, we are ordering these lovelies. I hope they are as wonderful as the company says…and that they erase off my board.

My photo-to-computer cord is missing therefore I can’t upload any photos, so you’ll just have to trust me on how cute it turned out or come for a visit and see for yourself.