Project Chalkboard

Alright, so I know it's been awhile since my last post. I've been very busy with work, but I did finally manage to get enough time to complete my chalkboard. You may remember, I bought this beautiful frame at a garage sale a few weeks ago for $1.

Well, after some work, I've managed to turn it into this.

Ok so here was the process:

First, I bought a piece of plywood and traced the shape that the board needed to be to fit in the frame.

I cut this out with an electric handsaw. This was my first time to use an electric saw and no injuries, woohoo!
Here is the backing once it fit into the frame.

Next, I sanded, and sanded.....and sanded some more, primed and then put several layers of chalkboard paint on my backing.

Now on the frame, I put paint stripper on all of it to take off the varnish and some of the stain/paint. This was very tedious work getting into all the nooks and crannies of the detailed woodwork. Once the varnish was all stripped off, I sanded the frame down.

Then I primed the frame and painted the first coat of paint on.

The next evening, I painted a second coat of paint over the frame in a different color. On the second coat, instead of coating the frame, I did a sort of dry brush/glaze so that the ivory from the first coat of paint showed through in all the crevices.

The paint colors I used were Ivory Tower from Loews and Nantucket Dune from Sherwin Williams. Thanks to my very generous boss, I got a whole box full of paint samples and pints for free!

God is good!

So here are some close ups of the wood work and paint color.

So there it is! Another project completed. Love you all!

-Amy