Oh My Gosh! Simple Signs!

Yesterday my daughter and I spent the day shopping, well not really shopping but looky-looing, and we wandered into a store that had a lot of cute "blackboard" signs.  You know that I love the whole blackboard thing (maybe that goes back to my being the daughter of a teacher and then a teacher myself and loving chalk and erasers etc.!) but everything is so mass-produced that it loses some of its charm sometimes.  Anyway, she saw one that she really liked and took a picture.

Meanwhile, I've been struggling a bit with how to transfer designs and fonts from my computer to a chalkboard base.  I tried cutting a paper stencil.  Didn't work.  Bought plastic stencil material and an X-acto knife.  Nope.  So, when I thought about that cool chalkboard that my daughter saw and that I really wanted to make for her, I needed to find a way.  The last option (or so I thought) before I hit the "search" button on Bing was to use white carbon paper and trace the design.  I was a bit worried about the white lines showing up though.  On to Bing.... lo and behold there's a GREAT SOLUTION!!  Three EASY STEPS:  Print up a picture or a Word doc of what you want.  Rub chalk on the back side up and down and then across.  Put the paper on your board and trace over the design with a pencil.  That's it.  Seriously, that's it!!

So, get an old frame or a piece of wood.  Spray paint the surface with chalkboard paint and follow the directions here and you'll have a great decoration!