I've read about that before. I live in Dallas. Texas is an interesting place, so many of us think of it as a country even though it isn't. Nothing here is stable, except our economy and the heat in August. Anything else is fair game. The last few days have been gorgeous! It was in the 70s for the last two days.
Its Christmas time and what on earth do you get a kid that has everything? Does the kid have an easel?
Easels, in concept, are a good idea. They can keep your kid busy for hours and... chalk is messy, dry erase markers dry out. That leaves you with a crappy thing in your home without a purpose.
I went to Ikea and bought two easels, I already had two at home. I went to home depot and bought some magnetic paint. Since I paint things all the time, I had painter's tape. The magnetic paint is not cheap, its $20 a can. I used it on 4 easels and have roughly half a can left.
Since I figured the chalkboard was a waste of good space, I taped around the chalkboard area. Not knowing that the paint is black, I spent time spray painting the chalkboard area silver. That's a step you don't need to do. When that dried, I painted on a coat on each chalkboard with a small roller I bought at home depot. The chalkboard side is not evenly flat. I suppose that's alright and all, but I would prefer the flatter side. I think I'll do my next one like that. The can says to use five coats and I spent two days letting the paint dry between coats and getting to it when I could. When the final coat was dry, I sprayed it with a metallic finish.
That's where I have to stop because we'll have rain tomorrow. The neat thing is that you can take a magnet or magnetic clip and use it on the metal side. Take any sheet of paper, tear out from a coloring book, whatever you want - and use that space!
Now that all of that is dry, I'm going to spend tomorrow taping around the areas so I can spray paint the wood. The nice thing about Ikea's natural wood is that it usually isn't painted. That's for you to do. You can paint it any way you wish, glue some wooden decorations on it, whatever you want to do, and make it personalized. I didn't care too much for the way the crayon holder area looked in the way it came, so I took the two from the new easels and went ahead and spray painted them.
Are you in a neighborhood mom's group? I may list a few of these in mine. People are always looking for a good last-minute gift.
I'm uploading the pictures of what I have now and will upload when I finish. On the bonus side, the metallic paint really does work! The black dot is a magnet.
I'm really unsure if the metallic paint will stick well to the slick side of the easel. Perhaps going over it with a light sandpaper would do the trick. In my honest opinion, I think the chalkboard side would be nice covered in felt with a handful of felt animals and scenery. Kids love to create their own picture, felt is not messy at all.
I should finish these this weekend. At any rate, they'll be adorable. This is a neat little project and you can get about 8 easels out of the metallic paint. That breaks them to roughly $2.50 each in paint. If you need to make a few, this is a good investment.
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