Making Boys Men: DIY Monster Chalkboard

Recently we have been fortunate to extend our house so that we have a larger playroom. This has given us loads more space and it's been great fun working out what we do and don't want in there. One thing I've always wanted for the boys was a chalkboard, we've done loads of chalking outside (like our chalk monsters), but never really inside. I didn't want just a plain rectangle chalkboard, so we decided to go for something a bit more fun, hence the Monster Chalkboard!

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I'd seen a very cool Monster Chalkboard sticker from notonthehighstreet.com, but we wanted to make ours unique so we sat down and designed a few different monsters with the kids. The trick was to get a shape big enough to use as a chalkboard, but looked monster-y enough to be a bit different AND very importantly could be painted freehand. In the end we googled monster silhouettes and came up with our own from there. Below is what my husband and oldest son came up with together.

Next up, Hubby very kindly drew the monster freehand onto the wall in pencil, he majorly impressed himself with his ability to draw a large circle freehand - quick tip, do it quickly - but, was super pleased we hadn't gone with some of the boys other more elaborate designs!

Then I outlined it all in chalkboard paint, we happened to already have some in the cupboard, but if you're interested in doing this yourself I found something similar here.

Next up we painted the bulk of the monster. This actually took three coats before we were happy and it looked properly black. Below is the almost finished product (if you're super observant you can see where there's still pencil marks and this is actually after coat number two, so it did get a bit darker).

But, the boys got stuck in to the actual chalking so quickly, that I didn't get a picture of the finished product. Big tip here I bought cheap chalks for them to use as that's what we've always used outside, but next time I will buy some anti-dust chalk like these for indoors just to minimise the dust and mess on the floor.

So, far so good it's holding up well, it's looking a little more 'well loved' now that it's in full use, but I'm enjoying adding little features and messages every so often for the boys to discover in the morning. I'm using a chalk pen to do that, like this one, it's the sort restaurants often write their signs with, bit pricey so the boys haven't had access to that yet!