Chalking It Up

"Back to School" is as much its own season nowadays as Christmas, and there's nothing that evokes the notion of kids again spending their days in the classroom as much as chalkboards do.  The zen-like ability to write something and have it be easily erased is one that's been easy to take home now for some time, a la chalkboard paint.  While fun for children's spaces, chalkboard paint is also useful and appropriate for numerous adult pieces and places.  Now is the perfect time of year to get reintroduced to this simple paint that can transition any surface!

If you're the type to go big or go home even AT home, consider painting an entire wall and using it as a blank canvas for chalk drawings:

Photos via Design Conundrum

Should obsessive organizing be more your fetish, consider chalkboard paint for your cabinet doors, so no one will ever again need to wonder what is in any given cabinet.  And heaven forbid someone tries to put something in a space where it clearly doesn't belong!  Now, you don't even have to do the work of letting them know something was put away incorrectly, because your cabinet will tell them first.  What a win-win.

Photo from everythingfab.com

Photo via remodelingguy.net

Is just labeling your cabinets not enough?  Can clarity of what goes where and belongs to whom go even further?  Yes!  Yes, it can, and these are two examples of where chalkboard paint may have actually gone TOO far:

Photo from maddiegdesigns.com

Photo via 818.com

Hopefully, it's safe to assume that neither you nor your offspring need quite that much direction in the bathroom, so we will now leave you with a few more normal, but still creative, uses.  Like, for example, painting over a globe, because we all know geography is totally thrilling... and the only way to make geography even more enticing would be to paint over your home globe and try to sketch it out in chalk yourself!  But you know what's really funny?  It's pretty impossible to find a globe done over in paint that anyone has drawn the world back on to!  Apparently, this is the ideal spot for random notes and messages.

Photo from Hoot Designs

Photo via Today's Mama

And now for the winner of Most Interesting Use of Chalkboard Paint: Mad in Crafts Blog has redone a pair of shoes with it, and if nothing else, they are unique!