Chalkboard Love

I have drooled over gorgeous pictures of chalkboards long enough.  Okay, not for eons...I mean I don't remember sitting in the classroom in grade school daydreaming about having a giant chalkboard, framed just perfectly, filled with lovely prose.  What did I know?  I was just a snot nose kid then!

Well, long ago and faraway, I picked up this ugly rather unattractive picture for a song.  The lady paid me to quit singing and it was mine! I kid...sort of.  It sat forlorn, neglected, but not forgotten, for quite some time in a corner of the basement.  The corner is now my craft room and there wasn't room for the both of us.  So I moved down and she moved up, after I gave her a little love first.

Just look at the detail on that frame.  She was like the ugly duckling, who was about to grow up into a beautiful swan.

First I slathered on the gray primer (my endless bucket is almost at the end)!  I just painted right over the picture.  It had a very slight texture that reminds me of real old slate chalkboards.  

After that dried,  I painted the middle with plain old black flat paint.  I read that it worked as well as the much more expensive chalk paint, so I gave it a whirl.  It seems to work just fine.  I just had to prime it first by rubbing chalk all over the entire surface, then wiping it off with dry paper towel or rags.  Here it is before priming.  It looks a bit shiny, but once primed it dulls right down to perfection!

The next step was to paint the frame.  I brushed gesso onto my gray primer, then wiped and dabbed most of it back off.  To get gesso onto the part of the frame right next to the chalkboard surface, I used a fine angled brush.

Working quickly, I then used a larger gesso brush (any bristle brush will work) to smoosh gesso into the design on the frame and the edges.

It doesn't take much gesso.  I just dipped the tip of the brush in the jar.  With this technique, you need to work quickly and in small sections.  The gesso dries very quickly.  In order to avoid marks where I began and ended each section, I feathered the end of the stroke out, then quickly used a paper towel to remove most of the gesso.

Here you can see a finished section, a gessoed section and an unfinished section.  That's about as far as I painted between sections.  It's probably 6-8 inches.

And now for the ta-da moment.  Keep in mind, this isn't hanging up yet.  I'm still deciding how I want to mount it on the wall.  It's just leaning on the floor in the hallway for these shots.

 I'm going to have to work on my chalkboard writing skills though!

Until next time, keep craftin' and smilin'!

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