interior Archives - The Desert Echo

A D.I.Y. chalkboard calendar is the perfect winter activity, and you probably have the materials lying around already!

With rain falling outside and breath forming indignant clouds inside, winter is not a time for us to slow down, we might just freeze where we sit! That is how I found myself up a ladder one wintry morning paint roller in hand… some people might call me spontaneous, perhaps our new housemate considered it impulsive. But in the end it was a triumph in transformation!

Our shed overflows with old paint cans, boring whites, charcoal leftover from some craft activity or other, tiling grout and random rollers galour! I don’t think this is an uncommon sight, it’s a crafter’s goldmine!

Link to my inspirations one, two, three.

ingredients

White interior paint

Black paint (interior or acrylic, any colour you like)

White tile grout

Masking tape

Containers with tight lids for mixing (1 per colour)

Spoon

Stick to stir paint

Small roller or paintbrushes

Old sheets to cover floor to prevent splashes

Paint roller tray, any shallow flat container will do

Hover over to help shake the paint!

method

That’s it, too easy! The only problem after I finished was realising I really didn’t have that perhaps my social life isn’t exciting enough to display at that scale!

Cover floor with sheets and put masking tape on light switches, skirting boards and window jambs, anything you don’t want to get paint on.
Masking tape the area you want for your chalkboard, I just did the whole wall because there was some unfortunate post party graffiti up there, you know the kind!
Mix tile grout with white paint in a ratio of 1:8 (about 2 tablespoons for 1 cup of paint)
I put both in a container with a tight lid and shake it like mad to mix it thoroughly.
Pour this base coat into the tray and apply to the entire surface you want to cover with a roller.
After this has dried layout your basic pattern in tape, as some lines will overlap you’ll have to do this in stages. If you are doing shades of grey like me you might want to layout all the white shapes first, then light grey and so on with black last. I didn’t do that, that was dumb!
Mix colours/shades as for the base coat, just adding different ratios of black and white (or colour).
If you don’t have many brushes start with lighter shades first and work your way up to black, to reduce time spent washing brushes between coats.
Let it dry! Some people recommend sand papering it and conditioning by rubbing chalk over everything and wiping it off. I didn’t, I’m lazy that way!

Marking triangle locations by dangling a weighted string to line up the triangles.

Hover over to see before and after!

When we got home we collapsed in a weary heap, that is I collapsed, Dylan decided he had to finish making a plywood box for our straw bales to live in. He is mad you know. Today I ticked off my second Permablitz and Dylan his third. It was at the South Melbourne Commons, a complete overhaul of the gardens there that has been chugging along for a couple of years. More about the Blitz later, after lunch we went for a tour of the Commons building. Inside the lovely old red brick building was hiding a treasure. The Apples & Jam Playhouse, where children’s parties and playgroups are held. Little patchwork birds hung from the lichen covered branches of a tree, swans dived between paper baubles hanging from the ceiling and toadstools sprouted from the floor towering over our heads. It was all very gorgeous and magical so I couldn’t resist putting some photos up. Creating a little world for children to play in must just be such a lovely job, you can just be so free and creative.

D.I.Y. Chalkboard Calendar