Image courtesy of MagnoliaHomes.net

I’ll admit it; I watch “FIxer Upper” starring Chip and Joanna Gaines on HGTV and I LOVE it.  They do good work, they seem to be a happily married couple who enjoy working together and, perhaps most importantly as far as TV-viewing goes, they are completely entertaining.  After starting to follow Joanna Gaines on Twitter, I realized that she has her own blog and the photo above caught my eye (posted here).  My kids start school this week and I love the cute chalkboard telling us what grade the little girl is entering (though I’d probably include the year, too).

My penmanship is far from perfect and when I try to make these types of signs they usually fall short.  Lucky for me, Ms. Gaines’ blog provides the “secrets” to amazing chalkboard calligraphy.  I’m in the process of making labels for just about everything we own as a result of our new, smaller, quarters, so I thought I would try out her secrets when labeling my household storage bins.

According to Ms. Gaines’, the items you must have are a chalkboard, chalk or a chalk pen, a magic eraser (for mistakes) and scratch paper the size of your chalk board for practice.  This project was a little bit spur of the moment on my part, so I headed down to my local Paper Source to see what I could find.  I decided to use chalkboard stickers, a white chalk ink pen, craft hang tags, and hemp cord.

The gist of Ms. Gaines’ advice is to map out your words on your scratch paper and then lightly copy it onto the chalkboard.  If you are satisfied, then all you have to do is trace over it again and again to achieve the desired shape and thickness of the lettering.  If you are not happy with your first attempt you can always use your magic eraser and start again.

Image courtesy of MagnoliaHomes.net.

Now, I have to admit that I did not spend as much time as she did on my own labels.  Nor did I do a lot of mapping.  But, I did follow the advice of tracing over the letters again and again and I think the results turned out pretty well.

Each tag got a little bit better than the prior attempt.  Now that I am feeling confident, I might have to pick up a chalkboard and make my own first day of school sign.  Thanks for the tips, Joanna Gaines.