From Trash to....

See this lovely little (well, BIG) framed chalkboard?

Oh it is just the perfect size for above that desk. Which again, looks TINY! Remind me never to use that stinkin' kit lens again. Distortion is wacky! I knew there was a reason I had it in the attic for the last 2 years.

ANYWAYS. It is a nice big framed chalkboard that I can switch around little quotes and such on. When I first put it up, it looked like a TV actually. But nope, just a chalkboard. Darn because that would be one cool looking TV!

Why do I keep getting on tangents here?? Maybe because it is 9:45 pm and we spent the day painting the play room and wrangling three kiddos? Maybe.

OK. For real now, I'm getting down to business.

So a while back I saw a pin on ye 'ol Pinterest of a framed corkboard that someone had made from an old thrift store frame. I thought it would be neat to do a chalkboard one too, so I figured I would keep my eye out for one.

Well get this. The VERY NEXT night I was driving down our street and low and behold, on the curb (trash night!) I see a STACK of old artwork! Seriously, there must have been 15. I pulled over and practically squealed when I saw them. There were a few of these big ones and some smaller ones. I slid five of the best looking ones into the back seat and had Steve unload them all for me when I pulled into the house. Score!

Here is what this one looked like (the others look similar):



Nice huh? Don't you just love that beautiful scene??

Now, this framed art didn't have any glass. But if yours does, just remove it. This piece was a fake oil painting on something like cardboard but thicker. So I just painted right over it.

Here is a close up of the great detailed frame:

It could be nice even unpainted really. But for the look I'm going for, I wanted it white.

Once you find the frame you like (Goodwill is a great place to look. As is Grandma's basement), you just need chalkboard paint, a brush of some type, and some white paint. Here is what I used:

I used spray paint with the first one I made and it was tricky. So I switched to a quart and used a foam brush (my detail oriented husband is cringing at the foam brush usage). It worked so much better and was a lot easier and faster. For the paint, I just used some semi-gloss white trim paint we had leftover from painting the bathroom. I used Olympic No-VOC Premium paint.

I found a nice flat surface to paint it on (our kitchen island was actually perfect because I could walk around it) and here is it after the black paint (again, I just painted right over the mountains):

Next, I taped the edges before painting the frame:

The more I look at these, the more I feel like the frame looks a lot nicer in gold in photos than it did in person...oh well.

So then I used the foam brush to do the white. You don't want to put it on too thick because it will drip. After the first coat, it looked like this:

You can definitely still see through the paint. So I waited a couple of hours and then applied a second coat. After it dried, I pulled off the tape, touched up the edges where needed (you can see in the photo above that I didn't apply it very precisely. Hey, I was rushing during naptime!). Here is the final product again:

Perfect. I used a chalkboard marker to write on it ($4 at Joann's) and figure I will change it up every so often. I love how nicely it looks with my white chair!

There is so much wall space in this house, that any large "artwork" I can find for a good price, I'll take. Considering that I spent a whopping $6 on this for the chalkboard paint, of which I used about 1/10th of the can....I think it's right in my budget.

I made one more for the playroom, which was the identical frame. I haven't put it up yet since we have actually been painting the room today....did I tell you that I can't seem to commit to just one room?? Yeah....today my mind started wandering to the dining room actually.

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