Chalkboard Gallery

I’ve seen a few home ‘Gallery’ walls for children’s artwork around the internet recently, and have been really keen to do something similar.  However all of the ones I’ve seen have been fairly ‘permanent’, and I wanted to do something a little more flexible that I could change very easily – mainly because we’re still trying to sell the house.  I also really liked the idea of having a wall for the kids (and me) to draw on – there must be a closet graffiti artist in me somewhere. When I remembered that I had an unused tin of chalkboard paint which had been in the garage for years, it seemed like fate. We also had the perfect wall in the kitchen for it.

Truth be told, the whole thing took me rather longer than I expected to create.  As usual, I launched myself into it, full of enthusiasm, expecting to finish it quickly and easily, but in the end it took 4 coats of paint to cover up the white wall beneath properly.  Progress was also not helped by the fact that I ran out of the original paint, and had to buy another tin, only to find that in the intervening 10 years they must have changed the formulation – the colour was not quite as black this time even though the tin itself was identical. So a further 2 coats had to go on top of the 1 and a bit coats I’d already put on using the old tin.

But it seems that these days you don’t have to choose traditional black, and there are now quite a few alternative colours to choose from when creating a chalkboard wall.  For example I found dark pink and a blue chalkboard paint in B&Q, as well as magnetic chalkboard paint.  For some reason though I didn’t really fancy making the whole kitchen wall magnetic – we have a large side by side fridge and freezer to supply those needs, so I just stuck the pictures on with blu-tac instead.

Overall I’m really pleased with the effect – it’s easy to do and makes a great feature, as well as being another creative resource to keep the kids occupied.