I'm not a witch at all - Chalkboard Tutorial

Chalkboards are everywhere right now, and seeing as how I have an obsessive personality, I've started creating them and writing on them in mass quantities. If you remember from this post my dear seester put me to work when I went out to visit my family earlier last month. I should actually thank her for forcing me because she sparked my crafting bug once again!

Anyways, I've been googling, researching like crazy how these people do their chalkboards, and I've learned a lot these past few days. I thought that these people were just coming up with their own fonts, and creating like crazy. I'm sure there are people that do, but I need something to go off of.

Want to create this?

Here is what I did!
1. I went to dafont.com
2. I searched for a font, I know one that I like to use - it's called "chalk hand lettering"
3. I searched and selected "CHL" and then typed the word that I wanted, in this case it was "good witch" and "bad witch"
4. I took a screen shot of each word, so I did a screen shot of "good" and one of "witch."
5. I opened a word document and inserted my screen shot into the document.
6. I enlarged the picture and printed out the document to use as a reference guide.

Unfortunately, I do not do the thing where you can shade the letters with chalk, and then press it against the board like in this tutorial. I just don't want to waste ink, and I'll be narcissistic for a hot minute, my hand writing isn't too shabby.


Before I left California my sister had a friend who was getting new windows, and had all these old babies just lying around. I took all of them. I believe there were 12. Well I'm down to 8 now from various other projects, and I gave a few away.

I taped off the window completely so that none of my chalkboard paint would seep through. This is the chalkboard spray paint I use. My husband doesn't use anything besides spray paint because apparently he mastered that technique. I'm not so good, but I think that since the chalkboard spray paint is already super thick, that it was easy to use.

I just sprayed lightly back and forth, for about 3 coats. It looks like it's uneven, but it's drying!

Here are the two templates I went with. Here are the templates if you want to use the same ones. 

I also use these markers from Michaels, but the thinner tipped ones. Also, if you make a mistake, fix it right then and there or else it's a little hard to erase. This is not a project that you can come back to later, you need to do it in one sitting.

I stuck it up on my mantel where it belongs halfway through to see if I liked it or not. I wasn't too sure how great of a job I was doing.

I finished and I actually enjoy it! I wish this wasn't a two paned window, but hey. It was free. What do you want, Gidgie? I'm enjoying it and looking at it right now. I'm already thinking of what to write for Thanksgiving and having a panic attack of having to erase it and recreate it next year!

Halloween Sign Tutorial

Happy Halloween! Oh! What's that? It's only September? Well well well. Let's break it down. There are 52 days until Halloween, and yes. I am already counting. I LOVE Halloween. You have to have some serious love for this holiday to create a countdown for the neighborhood children, right? I'm excited about Halloween this year because I'm in a new house! I'm also slightly nervous. You see, back at our old house in Oceanside, our little community was like something out of a movie on Halloween. There were kids everywhere. Mobs of them, and I secretly think that kids would get dropped off in our neighborhood because the knew the lady that lived at 714 Morse was hooking kids up with candy. Last year my husband acquired some full sized candy bars from the baby recruits who go through boot camp, and I handed out full sized candy bars (we had a huge moving box full of them) and went through $100 in candy, and we had to turn our light out because we ran out! See, INTENSE!

I'm eager to see how a North Carolina Halloween compares to a California one...

My sister sent me a picture of this exact sign last month, along with the blog. See, this isn't just something you can fetch from a Hobby Lobby, I mean a Home Goods, I mean from someone on the side of the road. You've got to see this tutorial first. ;) And here is the blog of the girl who made that sign, she's adorable!

 I did things a little different than her, and I actually have the words for the stencil that you can download if you want them.

What you need:
-Wood (1x4 in this tutorial) however big you want it, you can click on the tutorial link above for more specific wood instructions
-Black, Orange, Yellow, and White Acrylic Paint
-Teeny Paint brushes
-Washi tape (to hold stencils on the wood)
-Wood Glue
-2 Chalkboards
-Printer

Step One:
The first thing I did was take advantage of the week of leave my husband had. I texted him a picture of the sign from work along with one word, "Puhlease?" and when I pulled up in front of our house 4 hours later, I found him waiting for me with our dog upfront and this bad boy. God bless him!

He used 1x4s and cut them at varying lengths and nailed them to the two long poles you see at the bottom. It was very sort of haphazardly done (I didn't share the girls tutorial with him before this, whoops!) This one was rather large, but hey, we have a big lawn. I want peeps to see this from the street.

Step Two:
Print the stencils, cut and tape to the board.

Here are the templates - it takes you to a Scribd website - totally fine!
It's all about the candy stencil
Candy Stencil
Days Countdown Stencil

Step Three:
See how it looks. If you're going to spend an insane amount of time on a project, make sure it looks fabulous beforehand! I put hay under mine to hide the legs of the sign.

Step Four:
Cut out the words. This is how I got that beautiful writing! I only freehand with chalk - paint, not so much. I cut out everything and then trace it with pencil and paint the lines with teeny brushes.

Don't forget to do those candy corns first!

Step Five:
Use wood glue to attach the chalkboards

Step Six:
Put one of your best friends in front of it to model.

Step Seven:
Question the four hours you spent making the sign, and realize that you're bad ass in that headband, like Brett Michaels.

Step Eight:
Hang out with your wang out. DISPLAY!!!!!

Please let me know if you have any questions! On a difficulty level, I'd say this is a 3. If you can cut and trace, and don't have shaky hands, it's SUPER easy!

: )