First day of school painted chalkboard

(This post is sponsored by DecoArt.  I am a DecoArt Core blogger this year and work on a project each month using DecoArt products.)

Can you believe that back to school time is just around the corner??  The summer always seems to fly by. 

I have taken pictures of my nieces and nephew on or right before the first day of school and have always wanted to have one of those cute printable or chalkboard art signs for them to hold.  So when my project for DecoArt this month was to do a Back to School project I knew just what I would do! A fill in the blank, customizable Back to School chalkboard!  My middle niece was so kind to help model it for me – I will have to take all their pictures in a few weeks once they have their new bookbags and 1st day of school outfits picked out.

I started with a project board from the stash in the garage. You can pick up these boards already cut to size at Home Depot.  This one is a 2 foot by 3 foot MDF board so it is a pretty large size.

Then I picked out my paints. 

• American Chalkboard paint
• Americana multi-surface Satin paint in Cottonball (white)
• Americana multi-surface Satin paint in Deep Turquoise
• Americana multi-surface Satin paint in Brown Sugar (ended up not using this)
• Americana multi-surface Satin paint in Apple Green
• Americana acrylic paint in Bright Salmon
• Americana acrylic paint in Chartreuse Yellow

 

I first painted 2 coats of chalkboard paint on my board.  While that was drying I designed my wording that I would paint on the board.  I just did mine in a word document, but you could use free photo software like Picmonkey on a blank white image too if you wanted.  You will want bold/thicker letters to make it easier to paint.  I placed everything on the board where I wanted it to go.

Now here’s the trick to transferring text from paper as sort of a stencil onto any surface you want to paint words or art on.  Rub the back of your paper with chalk – any color – and if a large image than grab your kids outdoor chalk pieces to do it.  Then flip the paper back down on your board or whatever you want to paint the text on and trace with a pencil or pen along the outside of the letters – making sure to press firmly.  That will transfer a chalk image onto your surface and you have the perfect outlined stencil ready to paint!

So I stenciled and then painted all of my words onto the board and then also painted a line to divide each section.

Then it was time to fill it in and take pictures!  This will be such a fun addition to 1st day of School pictures and can be used over and over again!  It will be fun to compare the height of the child to the size of the sign from year to year too.  And as they are able – they could even fill in the sign themselves letting you compare their handwriting from year to year too!

When do your kids head back to school?  Do you take 1st day of school pictures?