Chalk Painting 101

Kelli has a moment of free time so she’s wanting to do some chalk painting again.  Chalk painting is a great way to decorate.  She can buy some cheap furniture and make it her own for cheap.  She’s addicted….and she always wants to drag me into her addictions.  (well I guess I started it…so technically I dragged her into my hobby)  Anyway the store that we always went to get our paint closed.  She went online to find a new vendor and found one even closer to  us…it’s Antiques and Gifts on Vine in West Union, Iowa.  Kelli did a blog post about her visit there.  Find that blog post here.

Anyway when Kelli visited she found out that they give chalk painting lessons.  She was thrilled.  She asked me to go…then she asked her mother in law, Renee, and aunt in law, Julie.  We all ended up going.  It was lots of fun.

Even though I’ve chalk painted several pieces, I learned a lot.  It was lots of fun too as we got to try out all of the colors.

I’m in love with the new yellow color, Arles.  It’s shown here on the bottom of my board.

We were able to several techniques most because of blow dryers.  We’d often have to put more than one coat of paint on and blow dry in between coats.

Here’s Kelli’s mother-in-law, Renee….and yes, we did get to drink while painting.  They had several different wines and beers to choose from.

Here we are with our finished projects.  Kelli’s aunt-in-law Julie is center in the back.

The shop also has great antiques.  Of course I gravitated towards the sewing related stuff.

They did have this wonderful picture that I am really tempted to purchase.  I snapped a picture of it to show it to Hubby and see if he liked it.  I thought to put it in the living room and then put he family pictures around it.

The shop is cute and I thought very reasonably priced.

Here are my samples from the night.

The orange is a two color wash…It’s a technique that I don’t really like.  The bottom grey is called stippling.

My favorite is the blackish and yellow on the upper right.  That is called a two color distress.

The bottom right is smooth and crackle.

With doing so many different techniques with so many paint colors and products it was hard to remember it all.  Thankfully they had us write what we did on the back as far as colors go then they also provided us a “cheat sheet” to take home and keep.

It was a fun girls night out and happily I learned something too.  Kelli and I would both happily go back if they had an expanded class to paint on fabric, glass or metal…we even put in a request that they offer it.  So maybe Chalk Painting 102 might be in our future.