Project: Chalkboard

Up-cycled Picture Frame into a Chalkboard

I've discovered the neatest product: Chalkboard Paint! How did I not know this stuff existed? And that I could buy it at Hobby Lobby? Honestly I did not know I could buy this and turn literally any surface into a chalkboard until I got on Pinterest.  Now I'm finding all these do-it-yourself projects using chalkboard paint. You can buy this in green and black.  At least, that's the two colors I saw at my local Hobby Lobby store.  The directions on the can make it very easy to use.  Shake the can, spray your surface, let it dry, spray it again for a chalkboard finish, give it 24 hours, and voila! Chalkboard! They're so reusable, and if it starts wearing out, you can resurface it with another coat of the paint!Some, not me, seem to think I'm a little obsessed with the chalkboard paint.  Simply because I see every surface as a potential chalkboard, like cabinets, walls, my fridge, I'm called obsessed.  I just don't get it.  

I've already completed one chalkboard project.  The idea came from here.  Understand, I'm a procrastinator.  Also my house eats paper and pens, and dishrags.  I can never find a dishrag to wash with when I need one! Anyways, since I can never remember to write things down right then, and since we never have paper or pens when we need them, I'm usually scrambling around the kitchen on grocery day trying to figure out what we're out of.  So this was one way to eliminate that.  Chalkboard paint on the inside of my cabinets.  Now when I reach in to get something and it's the last of it, I write on my cabinet door.  Then on grocery day, I hunt down a pad of paper my house missed and make my grocery list.  My pantry has three cabinets, one on top of the other, I painted all three doors on the inside.




For this project that I'm actually doing this blog about, I needed a fun potty training tool for Connor.  We've been doing the pull-ups and potty chair, and different things for about a year and he's still not consistent with it.  We tried different treats for peeing, pooing, and keeping his pull-up dry.  But once he learned he could have a piece of candy just for peeing, he was going all the time.  That was good and bad, cause now I was dealing with a three year old on a sugar rush! So we tried other, non-sugary treats, but he didn't like those, or we were running out too fast and having to buy them all the time.  I needed something non-expensive.
     I had seen different charts you could download and print out, but I thought, that's a lot of paper and printing.  I wanted something I could use over and over.  That's when the lightbulb went off over my head.  A chalkboard!! And I already had the chalkboard paint!  Now I just needed a surface.  This is where my borderline hoarding came in handy.  I dug around in my back closet and found an old picture frame I hadn't used since 2002.  It still had my high school graduation pictures in it.

So I took the pictures out, cleaned the glass with glass cleaner and started painting.

I let the first coat dry, it took maybe about ten to fifteen minutes.  During that time I busied myself by doing some laundry.  I'm sure there's an "as-fun-as-watching-paint-dry" pun in here somewhere.
Once it was dry, I sprayed on the second coat. And again with laundry.  After the second coat got good and dry I put it back in the frame.

When I was done I had a cute, framed chalkboard.
Right now I'm planning on using it for Connor's potty training, then probably Kenny's potty training, later on I plan on using it for something like a menu board in the kitchen, or a chore list for the kids.  There are endless possibilities.  I'm already looking for more unused frames I can turn into more chalkboards.  And if I can't find any more here, then look out thrift stores, here I come!

 I could put one in every room in the house!!