Chalkboard Paint: The Beginning of an Addiction {Part 1}

       i heart chalk     .

Seriously-I've always loved chalk much more than marker boards. I can remember sitting in school and thinking, "When is it MY turn to write the answer on the chalkboard??!?" I never had such gumption to write on the marker boards...perhaps because they wiped so clean and you couldn't see the ghost markings in the background which often made for a cool design? 

Needless to say, I've been wanting to play with chalkboard paint for a while. My dream was to build my own little frame on a wall and use chalkboard paint to create my own chalkboard...this of course was when we lived in Iowa and we owned our home. Now we rent, and I doubt that the landlord would be happy if I did that here. 

So, what do you do when you want to experiment with paint, but are not brave enough? 

1. Find awesome blogs that give how-to's so that you don't feel dumb for not knowing how to 

actually create it ;)

New favorite in the bookmarked blogs: I Heart Organizing

http://iheartorganizing.blogspot.com/2011/03/project-teal-chalk-it-to-me-again.html

{above link shows the how-to for making a chalkboard, the link below shows an awesome idea for storing the chalk on the board. I REALLLY wanted to do this, but alas, my frames were too narrow}

http://iheartorganizing.blogspot.com/2011/06/hmmm-thats-pinteresting.html

2. Take the plunge. 

I've been thinking of buying a piece of plywood and framing and make my own board...but why do that when you can come across these 2 pre-made boards with frames at a garage sale for $1 each?? Add a can of chalk paint for $9.97, a sample can of OOPS! paint for $0.50 {I wanted a fun, vibrant color, but it was $3}, and two brushes for $2...

{Before}

{After...the little guy couldn't wait for mommy to hang it-he insisted on using it immediately! One is for his play area downstairs...

...and one in the kids' bedroom for Mommy's notes, like this one, announcing our coming attraction of 

Miss Abigail Lucy :) }

I was very pleased with the results...so why stop there?? I got addicted to that blog again and decided, after seeing some organized totes, to get a little plastic organizer that Isaac could tote his crayons and coloring stuff in. Sadly, after perusing nearly every aisle in Target, I did not find what I was looking for, but I did find these:

Plastic Tote for organizing clearanced at $2.64 

{...not really sure what to organize in it, but the options are endless!}

Metal basket for $14.99 on clearance for $10!!! It's big enough that I plan on putting it by the door to drop our shoes in {my husband's sandals NEVER make it all the way to our closet, so in my attempt to live in peace, I decided to just make them more organized in their current location}

I taped the area that I wanted to paint, and attempted getting creative with the edges...we'll see how the that worked in Part 2.

Step 1: Put on first coat. ...Realize this is fun and feeling organized, 

grab sugar and flour containers to do the same.

I did notice that the paint took directly to the plastic containers, but the metal was streaky. It actually dried well after an hour (I was nervous that it might not work on metal), and took an easy 2nd coat.

Coat #2 drying nicely. ...Well that's funny. How did another container get in there??

And why stop there? 

I got extra ambitious and cleaned out the medicine containers and first aid container. They need labels too, right? {Not to mention also needed DESPERATELY cleaned out ;)}

Tomorrow I shall post Part 2 and we'll see how they all turned out!!!!

Oh, incase you were wondering what my child was up to while I was painting everything in the house to chalk:

...he was helping Mommy with the more important things on the To-Do list, like dusting :). This kid LOVES to dust!! In a raincoat of course, because, you know, don't wanna get all that dust on you apparently ;)