chalk and ingenuity

after 3 years, i can finally say that my kitchen remodel is complete! i finished this chalkboard wall a couple of days ago and i can't stop staring at it. does that ever happen to you? you finish a project and can't believe how perfectly it turned out that you just want to sit and stare?

the project began with this amazing vintage ice cream sign. i picked it up at a barn sale after i fell completely in love. it is double sided and definitely the real deal - if you measure age by the amount of rust, that is :) the problem is that the sign doesn't quite fill up the horizontal wall space. to compensate for this, i taped out a rectangle behind the sign to fill with chalkboard paint. i knew i didn't like the corners the way they were, i wanted a more custom look, so...

i took a piece of adhesive backed scrapbook paper, and hole punched a large circle out of it. then i took the negative space and cut it into quadrants and adhered them to the corners of my large rectangle. this was the perfect solution to get a custom look.

want a trick to get a perfectly straight paint line when you pull off the tape??? all you have to do is paint one coat of your base wall color over the tape. this way, any paint that leaks below the tape, will be the same as your overall wall color, so you won't even notice the leaks. easy!!!