Last weekend I participated in the very first Salt Lake hosted Vintage Whites Market. I participated in the event by teaching a calligraphy workshop. We had a blast. I had so much fun hanging out with some incredibly inspiring women (VWM, Shop Ruche and Gather & Hunt).

I was asked to do some chalk art for the entry way for admission and pricing, much like the one I did for Alt Summit. I didn’t have much time to do the lettering and unfortunately for me, it was a retro chalkboard with a sheen to it; impossible for actually chalking up.

I tried to prime the surface by rubbing chalk all over it, but nothing would stick. My chalk marker wouldn’t even make a mark, so I had to get creative. It was midnight and I needed to use what I had on hand. So I thought I would see how chalky paint would do. Here’s what it ended up looking like.

The paint worked well and I’m really excited about this new method – I couldn’t wait to share it with you. So here we go:

Make Paint out of Chalk

Soaking chalk was not about to work in the amount of time I had. So I researched. I realized I needed to phrase my query, “How to make paint out of chalk” as to try to avoid how to make your own colored paint that could be used for making chalkboards. Confusing, I know.

I found this tutorial, but I thought the technique lacking. I’m not going to rub chalk on my brush until I get enough chalk dust so I busted out the micro planer instead. Much faster.

I bet if you had a fine cheese grater or some sand paper, that would do, too.

I didn’t need a ton of chalk dust – I think for the large project I did for VWM, I used less than a stick and a half.

I mixed chalk and water a little bit at a time until I got the consistency of heavy cream and grabbed a brush I no longer cared for.

I’m sure you could do some really fun things with sponges and even food coloring. I haven’t tried yet.

I noticed the chalk doesn’t show up at first, but there was no need to run over each line twice. See below!

See how vibrantly the white chalk shows up after it’s dry? Again, no need to run over your lines twice.

It shows up so vividly on the chalkboard, but it’s just like regular chalk and erases with little to no effort. I don’t have a legit chalk eraser, but it came off just fine with a microfiber cloth. Bonus, right?

Now there’s a whole new way to participate in the chalking trend! We have the above chalk board in front of our house. It’s been since December that I’ve written a message on there (I would letter out different phrases each month). I think now that our front porch is clear of snow, I might start the monthly phrases up again.

Got any suggestions on greetings I should write on this baby?