If you celebrate, then Merry Christmas!
If you don’t, well, then Happy Monday!
Fun fact: I am super smitten by chalkboard art.
I have a Pinterest board of it, my Instagram feed is full of it, my iPhone wallpaper is created to look like it, and I have recently decided that I want to be able to do it.
I’m doing it my way, though of course. Baby Steps. I’m not ever expecting to become this guy.
To create this project, you need a chalkboard and chalk. And a stencil, which I cut with my beloved Silhouette Cameo.
For me, the first stop was to a discount grocery chain that I love, which had slate serving trays on a huge sale. This way, if it turns out I hate to letter on chalkboards, I still have two cute trays to use for serving cheese and snacks.
I have found stenciling to be a great way to get high quality results without actual high quality lettering/drawing skills. I used Silhouette Studio to type up my message. Keep an eye size of your letters to make sure the words won’t be larger than the chalkboard/piece of slate.
I have used a typeface that doesn’t have any counters so I don’t have to worry about moving them. Counters are those little things inside an O or A or P that drop out when you cut them. There are tricks for this, but this is a quick craft and I’m only going with the easiest of ways on this one.
Weed out the letters, and then carefully remove the paper from the mat. This creates a stencil for chalking.
The final step is to chalk inside the stencil. This is easier than when you paint because chalk doesn’t flow under the stencil. Or onto the table, floor and your pants (if you do any stencil painting you probably can identify with this).
There are two choices here (and neither is wrong) – chalk an outline using the stencil and fill it in after the stencil is removed, or chalk it all up and then remove the stencil.
And that’s it. With this trick, you can put just about any message on a chalkboard.
