out of my comfort zone..."chalkboard" art

Well, today's the day...the start of the "Step Outside Your Comfort Zone" series! Yay!

For a quick recap on the premise behind this series and a summary of my comfort-zone problem, click here...

Can I tell you a secret? After I wrote about the start of the series I was wondering why I did it. I kept thinking..."I don't want to do this - this is dumb...why would I want to spend time doing something I can't do? What a waste..." I even told my girl, Jaime (whom I met in real life last weekend...and let me tell you, she is a doll! I adore her...), that I hadn't started my project - I didn't even know what I was going to do yet! - and I was really trying to find a way to get out of it.

BUT, there's nothing like a self-imposed deadline to kick me in the butt...and, when I saw this post by The Nester last week I knew exactly what my "step outside" would be. If you didn't see the post, Nester featured some amazing chalkboard art by Dana Tanamachi...have you seen this girl's work??? Here are just a few beautiful examples...

Unbelievable, right? That's chalk...yep, chalk...I still can't get over it...

I really really like the look of the chalkboards...but my issue was using a paint brush, not chalk (although that's another problem area)...so I decided to make my "chalkboard" art a little more permanent. Here's the Dana Tanamachi piece that I was most inspired by...

I started by painting 1/2 of an Elmer's Foam Board with flat black spray paint. Then I took a white tailor's marking pencil (I'm sure any white pencil would do, I just used what I had around), laid out a rough design and started sketching my design.

This part was really fun for me. Here's a photo when I was a little further along...

When I was all done with my sketch, I picked up my little paint brush and 2 bottles of my DecoArt paint...one in Snow White & one in Lamp Black (to cover up all of my mistakes). That was the best part of this project - when I made a mistake...and believe me there were plenty...I just covered them up with black paint and started all over. As it turns out, my painted design varied only slightly from my original sketch...

So...what do you think? Honestly, it was A LOT more fun that I thought it would be. And, after using the paint brush for a while, I actually started to enjoy what I was doing.

It's certainly far from perfect...in fact there are some spots I may still change...but I like it. I really do. And I know exactly where I will put it (as soon as I get that project done, too).