DIY Chalkboard Mirror

Hello again! Hope everyone is doing well. Today I bring you a tutorial for something everyone is doing: a chalkboard from an old mirror. There are a couple reasons why I am doing this. One is because I am using a new product, chalkboard spray paint. The second is because this mirror is not removable, and I learned some hard lessons. Let's get started.

My new best friend.

First, supplies:

1. Old mirror
2. Chalkboard spray paint (or regular paint)
3. Frog tape, or any painter's tape
4. Newspaper

So the first thing I did was tape the frame with frog tape. I use frog tape because it's awesome, but you can use any painter's tape you want.

Then I covered the whole frame with newspaper. I am not a dainty painter so I didn't want any getting on my frame.

Then, I painted. Let me start off by saying that I LOVE the chalkboard spray paint. It's soooo much easier to use, and there are no brush marks left behind. The cons, however, are that more coats are needed and the spray paint does not go as far as a can of paint. But these are things I can live with! Now the really bad. Because this was spray paint I decided to do it outside. I will never do this again. I had to do 5 coats of paint because stupid damn bugs kept dying in my paint! So I would take them out with my x-acto knife, let it dry, and repaint. Oh my God, I am only painting inside from now on! Anyway, this is my painted mirror.

Ignore my stupid foot.

Then after it was all dry and there were NO bugs, and it was all smooth and pretty, I removed the tape. Then, disaster strikes again.

Ooooh, so clean!

The good: no paint on the frame! The bad: no paint on the mirror. I tried touching it up with chalkboard paint, but it doesn't match exactly. Now I had to go back, retape, and RESPRAY! Kill me. Everything turned out fine though, and the finished product is beautiful! Any questions can go in the comments.

You can see the missing paint on the bottom.

DIY Paint Chip Art

Good morning everyone! I hope you're all having a fantastic Tuesday. Today I'm bringing you my first tutorial! It's for a paint chip art piece. I've been seeing a lot of these on Pinterest lately and wanted to try my own. My Menards has really cute Crayola paint chips, so I wanted to try something with those. My first attempt was...a learning experience. There are a lot of things I am going to do differently the second time around for sure!

So let's start! First off, your supplies. For the project I used:

1. Mod Podge
2. Crayola paint chips
3. Dutch boy rounded square paint chips
4. An old picture & frame
5. Black spray paint
6. A sponge paint brush
7. Mod Podge roller and squeegee - optional (I don't know the actual names for these products)
8. Ruler
9. Chalk or marking tool

So the first thing I did was disassemble my old picture and frame. I don't have a before picture of this because I had already taken it apart for another project. Then I spray painted the picture black.

Next I laid out my paint chips to figure out which combination I liked best. This is what I went with.

Now, this is where everything went wrong. I don't know what happened! As you can see in the picture, I laid out my paint chips and marked where the squares should go. However, when I started gluing the Crayola chips down, somehow that third row had moved down too far and they didn't line up anymore. Unfortunately my mod podge had dried and I had to scrape off the yellow row, and I didn't have enough replacements and had to reuse one of the scraped off ones, and that left it too thin. Moral of the story, lay out the whole pattern to make sure it's right. Ugh. Anyway, this is me measuring it out.

And this is the beginning of me screwing it up! I don't know, they all lined up until the end. Whatever paint chips, you can't defeat me! So you need to put mod podge on the back of each pain chip and place it down (in the correct spot). If your corners start to curl up, just hold it down with your finger for a second. Also, if you have a roller and squeegee, you can run it over the rows to make sure they're flat with no bubbles.

Do this until you have three rows. Then put mod podge over the whole thing.

Then start putting down your Crayola chips. I really liked the way these all lined up. So pretty and colorful! Put mod podge on the backs of all these too.

And cover it with mod podge again!

At this point, just let it dry and you're done! The image I used was about 9"x13", but 8.5"x11" would have been big enough. Also not shown is that this was originally a framed clock. I had to disassemble the frame and then glue it back together. I used e6000, which EVERYONE SHOULD OWN. I also used too much mod podge on the last application and it dried not clear in between the corners of the squares. If you have any questions, just leave them in the comments below.