Upcycled Chalkboard

Hello, again! I'm back today with a quick and easy little project that I worked on for my daughter, Miss Olivia at her request. You see, my pretty Olivia will be 17 in September and starting her Junior Year this Fall (How on earth did that happen?). The past two years has been pretty rough on her. Young teenage girls can be so hateful to one another, and Liv has unfortunately felt the effects of that ire more than once from young ladies she considered her friends. She ended her Freshman Year as a kind of pariah and spent her Sophmore Year trying to please others in order not to have a repeat. I have sadly watched my sophisticated and kind young lady turn into someone that I didn't recognize and her life started to fall apart. With the support of our family and her teachers, I did an intervention of sorts. I am hoping that she is now on the path to a healthier and happier future. I have tried to impress upon her that in life, we don't often get a second chance or a clean slate to start over with and not to waste the gift of a bright new year in a new school with the opportunity of making better choices. At the suggestion of my step-mother, she is currently working on making some short/long term goals for the next year and wanted some kind of chalkboard or memo board to write them on. I actually had just the thing to upcycle, and I thought that I would share it with you today!

I found this sad looking and very grimy picture frame at my local thrift store for a whopping $2.99 and threw it into my pile of "stuff to work on" out in the garage. When Liv said she was looking for something cute, I knew it would be perfect for her new room. I pulled it out and gave it a thorough cleaning with a damp cloth and attacked the glass with some windex.

I started on the wood frame first by giving it a couple of coats of a new brand of paint I've discovered - Fusion Mineral Paint in the shade Casement. This is supposed to be a one and done paint, meaning no primer or sealant is needed. I used a random wax brush as I knew that the raised decorative areas in the corners would be a challenge for a normal paint brush and it worked like a dream. I was going to distress it a bit to test it out, but Miss Liv decided that she liked it as is.

Another new to me product is the Krylon chalkboard paint that I picked up while out and about. After the glass was cleaned, I took this outside and applied it as a normal spray paint. Two coats was all it took to get the flat matte black of a chalkboard. I had purchased a special fine tip chalkboard pen and Liv was able to make a list of goals that made my mother's heart sing.

And that's all it takes to upcycle a sad and tired looking piece into something refreshed with a new life! Easy peasy and a pretty inexpensive project that is perfect for a dinner menu or grocery list in the kitchen or as a decorative accent in a girl's room.

Until next time,

Frederica