Little Ceramic Chalkboard

Hello all! 

Happy Family Day for all my Ontario readers. This week I’m going to show you a quick little craft I cooked up one day, inspired by a thrift store find. Meet my newest little chalkboard: 

But first, an update about school! 

This week I start my third practicum for teaching! I would have started today, but Family Day is a holiday for Ontario schools, so I start tomorrow. For the next three weeks I’m going to be a grade 1 teacher!! I’m really excited about it. Grade 5 and 6 were great, and I had a lot of fun, but I love the younger kids and I’ve been waiting for a primary placement. Oh, and the teacher that I’ve been placed with is a fellow ECE! She too was a daycare teacher before becoming an elementary school teacher. I talked to her on the phone last week, and she sounds amazing. 

I’m very grateful to be out of classes and back into the field. I had waaayyy too many assignments due last week, and I’ve been working my bum off writing essays and doing group work. Yes, practicum is always a crazy amount of work, but at least it’s work that I love. Not essays. 

Well, not all my assignments are terrible. I made this little comic for my tech class:

And then after practicum is reading week, and I’m going to make a trip back home to see the family! Yay! 

Then I only have 6 weeks left (3 ½ of which are my fourth practicum) before I finish my program and I can finalize my application to become a certified teacher! 

I’m almost done! 

Anyways, as for today’s craft, I found a ceramic plaque while I was thrift-store-ing one day. It had nice shape, but was in desperate need of an update. I forgot to take a before picture (I do that all the time; I get so excited to do the craft that I forget to take a picture before I start), but I did remember half way through the first coat of paint. 

The grey brushed colour of the left of the moulding was the original colour, and it had a few daisies painted on the front. It was actually pretty cute for cheep generic art. 

I painted the whole thing white using regular acrylic craft paint, then sprayed it with a clear acrylic sealer. 

Then I sanded the center oval, and painted it with 5 coats of chalkboard paint, sanding the surface smooth between each coat. Then I decorated it with a fancy “K” for “Kneesh”. 

Remember whenever you paint a fresh chalkboard, or wash down an old chalkboard, you need to prime the surface with chalk before you write or draw on it. Otherwise whatever is written or drawn will not wipe off properly when you are finished. To prime the surface, rub the side of a piece of chalk lightly all over the surface, and wipe it off with a dry brush, then use the board as usual. 

Hanging on the wall in this apartment looks a little silly, because it’s a white frame on a white wall. But imagine how great this little frame would look on a maroon wall, or a mint green wall, with other various white frames as a collage. That would make a statement.