French Chalk Board (also known as "My Masterpiece")

Remember what I used to prop up my earring picture frame?  Remember how ugly it was?  I would show you a picture of it, but my computer has been acting up and it ate several of my pictures.  I'm sure they'll turn up somewhere, but until then, just take my word for it.  It was bad.

I bought the giant picture frame (and I do mean giant; it's over three feet tall and over 1.5 feet wide!) at an auction our church youth were having to raise money for their mission trips.  It was part of a silent auction and nobody bid on it.  After the auction was over and we were about to leave, I saw it again.  I knew I could make it into something.  The frame, after all, was really gorgeous.  I had two single dollar bills in my purse and asked if I could buy it.  Two friends and my mom also donated a couple bills for the occasion, so between the four of us, we all ended up paying $8 total for it. 

I took it home and taped off the sides.  I painted the top part of the frame with Gesso (again, I had pictures of this) and once the Gesso (primer) had dried, I painted it over with black acrylic.  I covered the whole frame with newspaper except what I wanted to be covered in chalkboard paint.  I used chalkboard spray paint to cover it.  I put on two coats, and it made a really pretty chalkboard.  Word of advice, let the paint really sink in for 24 hours before you try to write on it or you could end up scratching the paint off.

So now I have essentially a blank canvas ready to be painted.  I chose this French Ad from Graphics Fairy to paint on the top part of my frame.  Now here come the pictures!

I printed off the graphic and spent forever tracing it onto a transparency sheet with a sharpie, only for it to be too big for my space once I put it on the over head projector.  I went back and printed the graphic out the size of a 4x6 picture.  Then I made a photo copy of the graphic on a transparency sheet.  If you have a laser printer, you can print it directly onto the transparency.  If you have an ink jet like me, the ink will smear if you try to do that.

Using the over-head projector from my classroom that I borrowed, I projected my graphic onto the space where I was going to be painting it.

I traced around each letter and line with a pencil.  This took a while.

 After I finished tracing it out, I painted, very carefully, inside my pencil lines.

I used white acrylic paint and a teeny tiny paint brush to paint the graphic.  I am absolutely thrilled with the results!  It's my very favorite thing I've ever made, ever. Which is why I call it my masterpiece =) 

P.S. I just found this picture of what it used to look like on my phone.  The image is really bad quality, but you can still see the before and after!

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