DIY Thursday: DIY Chalkboard Calender

I have been wanting to do this project for a long time. I saw the idea on marthastewart.com. They did this beautiful multi-colored chalkboard calender, and that became my inspiration. Our family also collects magnets from wherever we travel and our fridge was getting a bit crowded so we decided to go all the way and make it magnetic as well. (Easier said than done.)

Anyway here we have our wall in the kitchen that we decided to use.

When I first thought of doing this project I was going to make the chalkboard paint myself to save some money but when my husband wanted to save some time and just buy it ready made, I did not refuse him :) When I was looking up how to make the paint my favorite explanation came from Two Girls Make Stuff. They tried a couple of different times and tell you what they like best.

We used Valspar Tintable Chalkboard paint, which come in all the fun colors you see on the side of the can. You can see the two arrows pointing to the two we chose. I wanted something a little more neutral because I am going to have to live with this on my kitchen everyday.

And we also picked up Rustoleum Magnetic Primer. (More on this product later...)

And here are the rest of our tools. Basic painting stuff tape, rollers, brushes. As a side note we decided that we liked working with the foam rollers that are used for painting cabinets best, they covered more evenly and in a thinner layer, which was ideal especially for the magnetic paint.

We removed everything from the wall and double taped all the edges. I was so excited to get started painting!!!

And then we opened the magnetic paint... Do you see that? That big chunky mess? Yes, they did not mention this at Lowes. 

A few notes about magnetic paint:

1. You need about 3-4 (error on the side of more is better) coats of paint to make the magnets stick really well.

2. This can of paint only covers 16 square ft. That equals 4' by 4'. (We were painting an area of about 8' by 9', and had to get 4 cans of paint, it was a little pricey.)

3. HAVE YOUR PAINT STORE MIX THE PAINT BEFORE YOU GET HOME!!! (It took my husband almost 30 min to mix the first can, after that we learned our lesson.)

4. You will need to keep mixing the paint as you go. Every 15 min or so. (The magnetic part of the paint is essentially thousands of tiny bits of metal and they will sink if given the time.)

After we figured everything out and took 4 trips to the store the actual process of applying the paint was pretty straight forward. You need to allow 30 min of drying time between coats but other than that is is just like painting with any other paint. 

On out third trip to the hardware store this nice woman who worked there told us that she had used this product before and after having a hard time getting her magnets to stick called the company who made it. They told her that the magnets need a smooth surface to adhere really well and she recommended this product to us. 3M SandblasterPro 320 grit, it was really easy to use. Although I think we could have sanded more to make it even smoother, I was lazy.

Even after all of this we still have a few magnets that don't stick. The colorful letters you stick on the fridge for your kids, I think the magnets are just weak on those. And a few others that we think might have just been to heavy.

Next came the chalkboard paint. Easy to use, although I do want to caution you to check the area that your paint will cover, we had to go to the store one more time to get another can of this as well. It is also worth mentioning that you need to wait 1 hour between coats for this product and 24 hours after you are done before you use chalk on it.

Now we are on to the calender!! (Sorry this is a long post, almost there!!)

I used tape and also cut out a piece of cardboard that was 6 in long to help with measuring. (I wanted 6 in by 6 in squares, but in hind sight I would have done them even bigger)

There is no simple way to do this. It took a while to get started with all the measuring but then it was pretty simple. I started with the vertical lines after I found the middle of my wall. You will notice that the lines are different sizes. That is because you are using tape, so if you want he squares to be side by side you will need to paint every other row and then go back. (This will make more sense late...I hope)

Hopefully the pics below help to make sense of everything. You can see the top square is 6 by 6 but in the area below the square the tape needs to be 6 by 6 in order for the next square to start where it needs to.

Here is the first application of tape all ready to go. I used the post its and little pieces of tape so you could see whats going on. We needed 7 columns and 5 rows to make the calender and the small pieces of tape show where I am going to paint my other color.

All painted. (I did two coats.)

With the tape removed.

Now we go in for the second application of tape. This part was so much easier because you just follow the lines you already have. Again I marked the squares I want to paint with the small pieces of tape.

All painted.

Ta da!! All done right? WRONG!

You need to chalk your wall after you paint and wait 24 hours. What is chalking the board? All it is is taking a piece of chalk on its side and rubbing it all over the board. (Like you would do with crayon rubbings of a leaf.) This prevents the chalk from setting into the wall and making what you write on it later difficult to remove. (Have you ever written something on a chalkboard and even after rubbing and rubbing it away you can still see it? This prevents that. DON'T skip this step.)

So there you go. Rub, rub, rub then wipe, wipe, wipe it all away.

Now you are ready to chalk it up! What do you think? I am pretty thrilled with it. And just so you know chalk is cheap, I got a big box of 32 pieces, white and colored, for a buck. 

My kids are enjoying it too!

So in the end this took a lot more time and money than we thought but I think it was worth the effort. Hopeful my little project will make yours a little easier. And don't forget to check out the magnets I made to go with my wall, that was a fun and easy project. Thanks for sticking with me to the end! Happy Crafting!

DIY Thursday: Nail Polish Magnets

I have been working on a wall in my kitchen to make a magnetic/chalkboard calender. We decided to do a pretty big wall and with all that magnetic space I knew that I would need more magnets.

So I purchased a big package of 50 small magnets at Michael's. They were inexpensive but not very attractive. 

In enters the NAIL POLISH! I wanted to "decorate" the magnets somehow but with nothing over the top. I don't want people to notice the magnets, I just wanted then to look less like magnets...

It was really simple I just set them all down on newspaper, chose my colors and got to painting. While I suck at painting my own nails this was really simple. Dip in your brush and do not wipe it on the edge of your bottle. You want it to "puddle" on the magnet, which will make it easier to spread.

You may even decide to dip your brush again to get a thicker coat. The nail polish automatically rounds off at the edges, and the end product looks almost ceramic. Remember to let them dry for several hours, I let them sit overnight, because of the thickness of the polish.

There are my precious little gems on our newly magnetic wall. Fun right? I will be posting a tutorial about the magnetic/chalkboard wall soon. So keep your eyes peeled. :)

DIY Thursday: Project Toy Cover Up

BEFORE

 AFTER

We are currently using the back of a bar that my husband "rescued" from the side of the road as storage for the boys toys and a place to but the DVD player and cable box. Now while I realize that we cannot afford to get something that I really want for that purpose at this moment, and i am ok with that, the fact is that it is UGLY and I was sick of it. So i decided to cover it up.

Awhile ago I made these pillows to replace the awful pillows that we used to have on our couch and I used the extra fabric from that to make the cover.

I won't bore you with how long it took me to firgure out the sizing that worked for the fabric I had because it is a very very long boring project. Just measure twice and cut once, as my mom would say, and make sure you leave room at the edges for the seams.

I ironed the edges down before I sewed them about 1/2 an in. This is a thick fabric and it made the process so much easier.

At the corners I tucked the end in of one side at a 45 degree angle and sewed across it. I have to say that I was way to proud of myself at how this came out. :) It just looks so fancy. (To me.)

Then I cut four, 3 in pieces of Velcro and spaced them evenly across the top of where I was planning on hanging the cover from. I chose to use the pokey side of the Velcro on the fabric so when it was not hanging people wouldn't hurt themselves of the bar.

Then I sewed them down on all four sides.

I spaced the other side of the Velcro on the bar and hot glued them to it.

And for extra stability I nailed them in.

On two sides.

TA DA!!! I think it turned out pretty well and as a bonus everything around it looks cleaner too. Its magic!

No not really. I had to take all these toys out of the chest to make it close. he he. Well, that's all for now. I hope this at the very least gave you some ideas on how to spruce up or cover up some of the unloved spaces in your home. How do you deal with toy storage?

DIY Thursday: Chalkboard Table

My kiddos love to write with chalk. Usually its outside on the sidewalk and then the chalk gets left outside and stepped on or the sprinklers get it. Luckily the dollar store has cheap tubs of chalk :-) The past while I have noticed that in the mornings before I get up they have been playing school and using these tiny chalkboards i found at the dollar store ( I like that store :-) ) They don't quite work with 2 kids trying to write. So I had the idea of turning a coffee table into a fun chalkboard table. So I started keeping my eye out for people selling old beat up tables for cheap. (In case you haven't noticed, I'm super cheap) It took a few months but someone was selling the almost perfect table for $5!!!

Can't beat that! The only thing it was missing was a drawer (I wanted a drawer to be able to keep the chalk supplies in).

Once I got the table it was time to get to work. I turned out easier than I thought.  All I had to do was lightly sand it to.get the top shiny coat off.

Then once that was done I got some cute spray paint and sprayed it. Once it was dry I noticed there were bubbles in some parts so I sanded those down and sprayed over those parts. If you look close you can still see them but since this is just for my kids I wasn't worried about getting it perfect.

 Then.I got some chalkboard paint from the craft store. There are recipes to make your own but I didn't feel like doing that.

It took about 4 coats of it to get it covered but I blame that on my crappy paint brush....I thought I had a good paintbrush but I didn't and I didn't want to go to the store again. Once you let the paint dry, the bottle said 24 hours, you are good to let the kids have fun!! This will be great in the winter or those days the kids wake up at 6am in the summer......