Easter mantel in green and yellow

I designed this brand-new Easter mantel by "shopping the house" and making use of the chalkboard frames I originally intended for a gallery* (another project started before baby dude was born and just finished!). So I started out with using an old window frame, draped some fabric across it, added the metal cross I love but haven't found the perfect spot for. Then I filled things in with my beloved milk glass plus some other glass from my collection. And a nest! What would spring decorating be without nests! Hee. This particular nest was green grass when my mom found it but now it has dried to a pretty butter yellow shade. You might not be able to see it well in this photo, but there's a vintage mustard jar on the far right that has a smiling yellow sunshine on the lid. So cute!

Speaking of nests, they of course pop up over on my shelves. As does the milk glass and the color yellow to keep the the spring theme going. Now, something funny for you, doesn't the nest perched on the one lower vase look like hair? Hee!

*I am having second thoughts about where I intended to hang these. I think they would have gotten knocked off the wall by kids busting in with backpacks. So for now, they are going to be mine all mine for decorating here and there as I wish. Discussion has begun afresh about painting various wall(s) with chalkboard paint! The kids are all about it!

old windows and chalkboard frames in progress

In a burst of spring cleaning/nesting I have given away most of my old window frames. I kept two and got them going. One I am sealing with a coat of fresh white paint and I intend to put black and white photographs in it. I have a wall of black and white art in my basement (the wall itself is red, such a great color scheme if I do say so myself). The other I am going to turn into a chalkboard for the kiddos but first I painted it the same great teal as my kitchen. I want to let that teal paint get nice and dry and hard before I put paint tape on it and do the chalkboard paint.

I have a great vision of having a whole chalkboard gallery for my kids to draw on. Originally my thought was to paint the chalkboard squares right on the wall and hang empty frames over them. Then I discovered via Pinterest that you can just paint right on the glass and thought that made much more sense! If you are interested, I found this blog post comparing brush-on chalkboard paint to spray-on chalkboard paint most helpful. I already have a can of the brush-on version so we are sticking with that.

So I got a whole collection of frames in the middle of being painted.* Actually, they are done. But I haven't put them back together yet. So they are in a sorry little heap. I don't think I can hang them until I get the old window chalkboard done. They are all going to be hung in the same stairwell and I need to map that out all at one time.

I am starting to think this is not a project I will get done before baby arrives so I figured I would give you a sneak peek for the time being. Oh, and I must show you my inspirations (via Pinterest of course). See it? Won't that be fun?

*Did you notice the crazy rainbow collection of colors. Gallons upon gallons? Every one of those colors is on a wall in my house somewhere! Hee!

Chalkboard labels for toy bins

When my girls combined bedrooms they also combined toys. This motivated me to label the bins on their IKEA toy storage containers. I also went to the further unnecessary step of labeling the toy bins in the baby's room. Chalk it up to nesting, I guess!

My main challenge was that I did not want to make the labels out of sticker paper or anything too permanent. I settled on cutting apart an old corrugated plastic sign, coating it with 3 coats of chalkboard paint, and then adhering it to the bins with hot glue. It's been a few weeks and the hot glue seems to be holding up as an adhesive. I imagine they could be picked off of the plastic bins pretty easily.

Christmas gift crafted: chalkboard ornaments!

I found this idea on Whip Up from a guest post by blogger Curly Birds over a year ago. I was originally aiming for the little people shapes as shown. And I had the thought to throw in pets too – little dogs and cats. But then I could not find the flat wooden people and decided to go with flat round discs instead, which made things simpler anyway.

Each one is painted with chalkboard paint and served double-duty this season as gift tags! Every family also got a box of colored chalk along with their individual ornaments to inspire future creativity.

My 4-year-old daughter helped me paint them this past Septembert. My only regret was that we did not paint them on a better surface – perhaps wax paper. Our generous application of paint made little puddles that ended up sticking to the newspaper. When everything was dry, we'd have little shreds of newspaper to pick off! The ornaments were unfinished so they soaked up the paint. I think we did 2 coats on each side.

I am hoping to keep up a similar craft in the future that can involve my little ones. I like the idea of them experience the joy of creating and giving and not just receiving.