Doodle Chalkboard

"Every child is an artist.

The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

~Pablo Picasso

My daughter is totally in the "artist" phase of toddlerhood, bless her cute heart. But markers give me the chills, so I thought...."chalk!" Sure!

And do the Doodle Chalkboard is born.

With tic-tac-toe on one side, and a paper doll on the other!

I went to Lowes and bought a 2'x4' sheet of particle board for $6. I had them cut a 1ft section off before I left the store. Then I brushed on two coats of black chalkboard paint, waiting 24 hours between each coat. You can certainly prime first if you want to, but I didn't have primer, so I didn't! It turned out just fine without it!

I googled "paper doll outline" to find this image, and blew it up to 250% before printing it out. Then I traced it with a marker onto wax paper, adding hair to make it girly.

Then I cut the doll out, all in piece, to make a "stencil".

I mixed some on-hand acrylics to make a light pink....yes, that is an eye shadow brush. Use whatcha got, right? :o)

Then I painted a line down the center of my board as a divider, to make two 1ft squares.

I put double stick tape on the back of my stencil, and gently pressed it on to the board in the center of the right square. Then brushed my paint along the lines of the stencil, as smoothly and evenly as I could. (Don't worry if the lines aren't exactly perfect, it makes it childlike and fun!)

After that, I opted to free-hand some polka-dots on the top and bottom of the square. Although you can easily make a small circle stencil out of the wax paper if you'd like!

On the other side, I marked lines with a ruler and pencil, and used my paint brush to make a tic-tac-toe board, and free-handed some scallops along the top and bottom. I'm totally kicking myself for not thinking to write "Paige" on it somewhere! How cute would that have been?

Then, I let it dry, and coated the pink areas with clear nail polish, and ta-da! A super cute chalkboard!

It's much more pink that in looks in the picture....apparently my camera does not like chalkboards.

Picasso she is not, (thank goodness) but she's been having tons of fun with it!

Afterward I added some picture hooks and made it into removable wall art.

I think it would be cute to have 3 or 4 1ft x 1ft squares with different pictures painted on them for the walls. Then you could just take down which ever one you felt like drawing on that day! Or use them all when friends are over.

(p.s. Those old wood Jenny Lind style changing tables you see everywhere at yard sales? They're really cute when you spray paint them pink!)

For clean-up-I think a damp rag works better than anything with chalkboard paint.

And This is another project that is totally adaptable to boys or girls, so don't think you couldn't try it with boy-friendly pictures, like bugs or tucks, or something! :o)