D.I.Y. Chalkboard Calendar

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

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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!

  1. 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.
  2. 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!
  3. Mix tile grout with white paint in a ratio of 1:8 (about 2 tablespoons for 1 cup of paint)
  4. I put both in a container with a tight lid and shake it like mad to mix it thoroughly.
  5. Pour this base coat into the tray and apply to the entire surface you want to cover with a roller.
  6. 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!
  7. Mix colours/shades as for the base coat, just adding different ratios of black and white (or colour).
  8. 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.
  9. 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!


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


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Hover over to see before and after! 


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REMNANTS LIKE SPECKS OF PAINT

Broccoli Waltham in the nature strip

Cauliflower in the nature strip guerrilla garden

Broccoli Waltham in the nature strip guerrilla garden

Broccoli on the chopping board

Broccoli, chilli, lemon zest, bread crumb and parmesan pasta

Globe artichoke and orange marigolds in the nature strip guerrilla garden

Grape hyacinth flowering in the nature strip guerrilla garden

Spider in the broccoli Waltham

Broccoli and broad beans in the no-dig garden

Aquadulce broad beansgrown from seeds from the Diggers Club

Blue borage flowers

Garden diary watercolours and colourful specks of food on the plate to match

Our little nature strip guerrilla garden has burst into life as winter and spring fight it out (looks like the last week of 20 degrees and glorious sunshine will be battered down to 11 degrees and dreariness by the end of the week. Sigh.). The broccoli has formed beautiful heads and the cauliflower is shyly following. After hearing about the local naughties raiding nearby community and school gardens, in some cases departing with whole strawberry plants, I have been delighted to see no one has taken anything. Sure people seem to think it is a good place to dispose of junk mail and empties but otherwise people have left it alone. More surprising, as is technically public land people have more of a right to have a nibble, but don’t tell them I said that until after I have harvested my first cauliflower, he’s just so cute.

Here is the recipe for the Broccoli and chilli pasta with garlic breadcrumbs.

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KINGOONYA

The morning we took our day trip to Kingoonya we got kicked out of the caravan park . We’re still not quite sure why, something to do with us being “filthy pigs” (i.e. leaving our painting out to dry) and one of the girls using the upstairs bathroom. I think it all came down to the caravan park owner being a hard-on. He used to work at the Detention Centre, everyone in the town despised him. Luckily the town seemed to love us and set us up in the school gym for the night.

Kingoonya was amazing , we all loved it, the slow ruin of the place. We’re not really sure how those cars ended up on the roof of the sheds. It looked as if there had been a flood that gently floated them up there.

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