Thursday, March 31, 2016

Turn A Chalkboard Into a {BETTER} Chalkboard


My mom loves to pull things out of her piles of stuff in the basement when I come home to visit and see if I "want to do something with it".  I took this home over FIVE YEARS AGO.  But we all have those projects that we're going to get to "someday" and someday just never seems to come.  Until you get some chalkboard paint mixed up and decide to just paint every project that's ever been on the back burner with chalkboard paint in one afternoon!

Probably four years ago, I had actually started this... I had painted white over the the little quad of veggies and the awful faux crackle design of the frame, but that's as far as I got because inspiration just didn't really come.  The chalkboard finish was super cheap and slippery and you might as well just try using a porcelain bathtub for a chalkboard.


Now there are no doubt probably at least 1,898 tutorials on how to make a chalkboard on Pinterest.  And I'm not going to claim my recipe is any better than the other 1,898.  I've also shared my recipe on here countless times, but never in quite this much detail so here you go.
  DIY Chalkboard paint Kammy style:


I use THREE THINGS:

1/4 cup Plaster of Paris
1/4 cup HOT water
and about a cup and a half of black paint
 (any color and any finish will do - does not have to be flat and no measurements need to be exact!)

1. Dump 1/4 cup plaster of paris into a butter dish


2. add 1/4 cup hot water and stir until dissolved.


  3. Pour in your paint.  Just pay attention and don't spill it all over like I did while trying to take a photo for all your wonderful people of how this looks.  Not that ya'll don't know what "pouring paint out of a can" looks like.  But ya know, for the visual learners. :)  I did not measure my paint, just filled it to the top and stirred it up good.  Well.  Stirred it up well.  Don't want the grammar police to jumpin' on me.  And if it seems to runny, you can always add more P of P. 


The dry time is much less with chalk paint so you can be ready to apply that second coat soon. You can lightly sand inbetween coats of paint, but I don't usually.  On my final coat, I take a piece of chalk and rub it the long way over the whole surface, then use a chalkboard eraser to really rub it all in good and erase it.  If you want the super clean black look, use a damp rag to wipe it all down when you're done.  Sometimes after the "chalk procedure" I decide to put one more coat of paint on...  it's always good to have several coats and let it cure at least a day before writing on it!  If you are doing this on a glass surface, you want several more coats of paint AND you'll want to wait several more days for it to cure.


For this project, I  painted  the frame and all with chalkboard paint and then sanded all the edges so the white would show through for a distressed, vintage look.




I used different shapes and sizes of number stencils and just randomly stenciled them in the little "frame" at the top.  I did not preplan this, just crossed my fingers and hoped they'd all fit right.  They did. :)


It's funny, because this really was our menu for supper last night... minus the cream puffs.  
So imagine when my kids are reading this and get to the cream puff part... whoops! They felt so totally jipped!  Haha.


Like what you see?  Follow Kammy's Korner on:





 You might also like:



TDC Before and After

1 comment:

  1. This is really cute, Kammy! I especially like the neighbors. Thanks for sharing! Cynthia

    ReplyDelete

Comments - Next best thing to chocolate! :) Please let me know you visited!