Who Are You Calling Crafty?

I love chalkboard paint and according to what I have seen on Pinterest recently I am not the only one.  I really wanted to make the cover of my daughter’s Sketchbook a chalkboard.  I thought she would really enjoy it – I plan on doing it to the back cover also.  The problem with all the recipes I found is that you need non-sanded tile grout unfortunately I do not have tile grout in my stash (sounds like something I would have but I don’t.)  I did however pick up an 8lb box of Plaster of Paris this weekend and I of course always have baby powder.  Tile grout is essentially a cement, sand and water mixed together.  I have an extensive knowledge of grout and mortar, I know you can essentially use Plaster of Paris in place of cement (as long as you are not doing anything to elaborate – I would not recommend using plaster on a huge mosaic piece) but you need to add something else – stone or sand to it.  I added baby powder to my mixture to act as my sand.  Since I used acrylic paint I did not need to add water to the mixture.

Materials:
Plaster of Paris
Baby Powder
Craft Paint – I used PLAID® Apple Barrel Colors® Bright Magenta #20591
Small Plastic Container
Craft Stick

I used a normal plastic tea spoon for my scoop.  I did a one to one ratio with the paint and plaster (1TBSP of Plaster to 1TBSP of Paint).  I added two small squirts of baby powder (maybe a tsp – TBSP at most) and mixed it up.  Having used chalkboard paint in the past I can say this was very close in consistency to real chalk board paint.  I did sand mine to make it smooth out the paint (I don’t like bumps).

I could only find my kids GIANT chalk to write but I wanted to demonstrate that it does work!