Homemade Sign

I decided that today (July 27) would be a day away from the internet. I find taking a break from cyber world is refreshing sometimes - offers a new perspective on things. I typically take time off with trips and such, but since I have no such trips planned anytime soon, I'm taking a forced time out.

I didn't want to interrupt my daily blogging of July though, so I wrote and scheduled this post for you. Hope you enjoy it. :)

With the boyfriend gone and an empty summer ahead of me, I decided to take up crafting more. I love to craft - I don't always make time for it though. This summer, I decided I'd undertake several craft projects. The projects range from scrapbooking to painting to sewing. The project I'm going to share today is a painting project. It took me a few do-overs to get it the way I wanted it, but the end project was what I wanted!

I started with this:

 

 

And this. Well, actually this started off wooden and already has a coat of white paint in this picture:

 

 

Then, I did this to the frame. That's painter's tape over all of the black part. I had no reason to ruin the chalkboard.

 

 

 

I messed up the frame. I painted a coat of red and then attempted to paint white over top. I didn't think through the colors in my head before I started in. The upside to using paint? When you mess up you can just paint back over it all! The picture below is my mess-up attempt at stripes:

 

 

 

I took my mess up and covered it with white paint. Then, I placed painter's tape back on the frame to create stripes. I decided on vertical stripes for round 2. This is the mess that ensued. Luckily, you can get a little messy with painter's tape and it doesn't matter!

 

 

 

Somewhere in this mess, I added dots to the anchor. I used the eraser side of a new pencil to create my dots. This is perhaps my favorite part of the entire sign!

 

 

 

And the finished project is below. I now have a cute sign to hang outside my classroom when school starts back up! I bought another chalkboard sign and I think I'm going to experiment with making more of these in different designs. I found it very relaxing to paint. :)

Now to work on improving my "cutesy" handwriting...