Product Review - Chalkboard Paint

Yellow folks!!!

How have you all been? I'm sure everyone's been awesome. I'm really excited to be back. Well, technically, I was never away, but for the past few months I wasn't actively involved in 'creating' anything for Lulupu; just behind the scenes kind of a thing. But from this month onwards, I'll be sharing with you guys again and it feels really good.

As far as today's post is concerned, I'm going to be talking about a product from the Lulupu Store - the Chalkboard Paint. It is such a great product that I am kind of feeling bad about buying it months ago but using it only in the past few days, that too, just because I had to review it. Sigh!! Married life leaves little time for other things. :P

Anyway, as we are doing this post around tea time, feel free to read this with a nice hot cup of tea/coffee with you. :) 

Coming back to the point, let's talk about the product in question. It is like paint, but much thicker, and once it dries, the finish is like a chalkboard, and hence the name. It is available in two colours - Black and Green in 8oz bottles (both available on the store.) It's fairly easy to use, just like paint. You take a paint brush, dip it in the bottle and directly apply it on your project. That's about it.

So when I figured out how simple it was to use it, I decided to do some organising in my kitchen. I have all these plastic storage containers, and I fill all my pulses, masalas, even cereal, in them. Although they look nice just the way they are, I wanted them to look a little fancier. So I decided to apply a patch of the Chalkboard paint on one of the smaller containers that I use for storing pollen (just as a trial,) so I could write the contents of the jar on it. :) Cute, right? 

But here's where reading the instructions on the jar becomes important. The bottle clearly said that it should be applied on porous surfaces only and as far as I remember, plastic, not so porous.

Here's how it ended up looking after two coats of paint. 

Although it stayed on, it feels like how fevicol sticks to your hands after it dries up. It can be pulled off the jar. Can you see that in the corner?

So I decided to stick with good old paper. Sigh! I cut a craft cardstock to 4"x8" and scored the 8" side at 4" so that I had a 4"x4" card. I thought I'd use it on the dining table to describe what's in the container. Here's what I did. 

{Click on the pictures to see a larger image. And oh, there are quite a few pictures. So yeah!} 

I stuck Washi Tape on all sides so that I could create a margin. I chose Washi Tape because that's the only thing that will come off without damaging the base.

Then, I used a paint brush to simple apply the Chalkboard Paint on the cardstock.

Here's how it looked when I was done painting. The paint is still wet here.

This is how it turned out after the first coat of paint had dried up. Obviously, it needed another coat. So I applied some more paint on top of it. :)

It looked great after two coats, but I wanted to see what difference a third coat would make. So I added another layer. And loved how it looked!

I got so excited that I decided to paint an entire 12x12 sheet and make it into a "Remember This" or "Things To Do" kind of a board. I've only applied the first coat here.

This is how it looked after two coats.

You can see that even though the 12x12 looks good with just two coats, a third coat on the smaller cardstock made it look so much thicker and richer.

The next step was to lightly rub chalk over the surface. So that's exactly what I did. 24 hours later (as it said on the jar)

 

Then, I rubbed the whole thing off with a cloth and just wrote on it with a chalk. Simple!! See...

And guess what?? I tried writing on the patch I painted on the plastic jar... and even that worked.. :D

Things I realised while using this product.

1. Even though it says you should wait one hour for the first coat to dry, I painted over it in 15 minutes when it appeared dry to me. Worked fine.
2. Even though it says it'll work only on porous surfaces, try it on non-porous surfaces - just a tiny patch and then decide for yourself. Worked on the plastic jar, didn't it? Well, kind of.
3. Don't believe everything on the box!! :P
4. When you try opening the jar, some of the paint might rub off on your hands. It does come off when you wash with soap, but might ruin your nail polish. So either be extremely careful, or don't use this with your nails painted or use gloves.
5. For best results, let it dry overnight before you start writing on it.
6. Even thick card stock will bend and curl. Once the paint is dry, put the cardstock under a mattress or something. Or curl it in the opposite direction to set it right.
7. It is soooo much fun to use this!!! :D

I hope this was helpful. Please feel free to ask any questions, in case you need to!

Happy Painting!!

Love,

Nikita... :)

Products Used