8 Fun Chalkboard Paint Ideas

February 27, 2014 - posted by Rose Marion

Chalkboard paint is a hot home decorating secret! It’s all over Pinterest.

Hey Girl. You're right, chalkboard paint would be perfect on that .

Chalk and blackboards go together – but you don’t have to be limited to black paint! With our Valspar paint line, we can color match your paint, swatches, or color scheme, and mix you up a pint, quart, or gallon of the chalkboard paint you want!

At the Make & Take we had at the Smith & Edwards Paint Department last Saturday, you could paint your own 12×12″ board with chalk paint to take home and demo on your walls…. or let your kids try out what they want in their room!

Girls trying out chalk paint at Smith and Edwards

Taylor, Jaycee, and Payton painting their own Chalk Paint boards at Smith & Edwards

Plus, we had samples of awesome FrogTape Shape Tape to create patterns. This Frog Tape is like painter’s tape gone to art school. No more plain lines – now you can make scallops, zig zags, and ruffles in PERFECT precision.

And this tape is really good at preventing bleed-through so you have crisp contrast, not little droplets showing through.

Revealing the waves under the Shape Tape Frog Tape

Look at those waves!

So thanks to the great creative ideas from the crafters who came to our demo, and the crafty people in our Paint department, here are 8 fun chalkboard paint ideas you can try at your home. Try doing two-tone, too! These aren’t all home improvement ideas, either – these are great ideas for a family activity, hosting sleepovers, or birthday parties, too.

8 Fun Chalkboard Paint Ideas

1. Chalkboard Paint Pixie Dust Container

Does your 4-year-old need cheering up on a rainy day? She’d love to play with this Pixie Dust container! It could have anything in it – maybe even T-Rex Growth Potion for your dino-minded boy. Just take an aluminum container, punch holes in it (hammer and a nailpunch, or a Dremel), and then a coat of chalk paint. Works great for making pretend sprinkle jars for playing house, too!

2. Chalk Paint Spice Jars (or Sprinkle of Awesome)

Much like pixie dust containers, simply paint Chalk Paint on your glass spice jars to label them. When you use all the spices, rinse them out and write the new spice on it.

Remember, we can mix up your chalk paint in any color – so we can match your kitchen accent color, trim, or favorite plates!

This would be so cute for giving jams in Mason jars, or for your flour & sugar bins!

3. Chalk Paint Flowerpot

Label the seeds you’re starting in your flowerpot by laying down some chalkboard paint on a terra cotta pot. Or, if you’re like me, remind yourself how often to water your plants!

4. Chalk Paint Doorknob Hangers

Chalk Painted Door Hanger at Smith & Edwards

Boys Stay Out!

These are great for your middle schoolers! Take a wooden doorhanger blank and your kids can paint them in their favorite colors. Boys keep out!

5. Chalk Paint Clipboard

Out of all those on the list, Smith & Edwards is most likely to have #3

Kids can have fun making ….creative grocery lists! Y’know, we might have #3, let me go check in the back.

Future architects will have fun planning their Lego structures with the help of a clipboard. No more looking for scrap paper: they can sketch blueprints right on the board.

Look at that cool pattern on the back made with Frog Tape shapes!

We’ve got clipboards right here for you in the store.

6. Kid’s Chalkboard Tray for Car Rides

Better than an Etch-a-Sketch, encourage your children’s love for drawing with an aluminum tray painted in their favorite color. The raised sides will keep the chalk from rolling off. They can help you keep track of groceries, draw maps, play hangman with their brother, and practice writing.

This is a 12×9 aluminum cookie sheet that Brenda painted with a mauve chalk paint. Let your kids play on the board with chalk in the back seat, and a slightly-damp paper towel works great to erase the chalk.

7. Swatch for Painting with Chalk Paint

Thinking of painting a wall, toy chest, treehouse, or trim with chalk paint? How about using Frog Tape Shape Tape in your room? Take a 12×12″ board like the ones we have and try it out.

8. Kitchen Chalk Noteboard

Keep the family on track with a wooden noteboard painted with chalk paint!

Take it one step further with scrapbooking paper and you can have a framed noteboard.

Excited? Come on in to Smith & Edwards’ Paint department and we’ll mix you up any color of chalk paint you like to take home with you!

And we’ll have to do another demo day sometime – it was sure fun!

Bonus: Chalk Paint Furniture

Speaking of what to do with this fun paint… How about furniture? We’ve heard of folks painting an old desk – the entire desktop! Maybe your kitchen table or your old desk have some chips in it, or just could use a touchup. Or how about the kids’ table?

To paint a desk: Just put some chalk paint down (you could mix baking soda in it first for extra texture). Then when the paint’s dry, rough it up some with fine sandpaper to give it an antiqued look, and buff it with beeswax (we recommend Johnson’s or Howards Beeswax, we’ve got them on aisle 17) to seal it.

Then the kids can use chalk to play and draw! Or how about writing their names and drawing their own placemats right there on the kitchen table?

The chalk paint you want – in the right color, for the right price

We’ve seen chalkboard paint going for as much as $35 a quart – we’ll beat that price by 33%. Brenda got a quart of the blue paint that she’s used on several projects. She’s been painting and painting with it and she’s still got most of it left! So just a quart of this will last you a long ways.

You don’t have to paint a whole room with chalk paint. It’s best in small, special areas.

Looking even more ideas? Check out some REALLY inventive ideas at brit.co – including chalkboard pumpkins!

Remember we can make you up chalk paint in ANY color, so bring in your ideas, Pinterest boards, or paint swatches and let us help you get the chalk paint you’re looking for at Smith & Edwards’ Paint Department off I-15 in Farr West, Utah.

Watch our Events Calendar for classes, demos, make & takes, and more FREE & FUN events at Smith & Edwards!

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Rejuvenate your Home with new Paint Palettes!

December 14, 2013 - posted by Rose Marion

Lots of hardware and home improvement stores have paint departments with all those wonderful rainbows of paint chips.

If you’re building your own home, starting to personalize your new house, or finally getting around to touching up after the kids have flown the nest – you know how important those color swatches are, and how much time you can spend with them!

Picking Paint Palettes

One of my favorite things to do when I’m trying to pick paint colors – it’s a long-term decision! – is go to Pinterest and search for paint color palettes and inspiration. I love the colors people have already put together – much better than trying to hope the colors I choose will play nicely together!

And you know what? The paint counter at Smith & Edwards has several color palettes already created in gorgeous combinations with paint chips right in the palette! You’ve got to come in and see them! Take home a sample and tack it to the wall so you can visualize how your living room would look in a brand new coat of paint.

Valspar color trio palettes at Smith & Edwards

Smith & Edwards’ new Valspar color trio palettes

Clark+Kensington paint chips, top, and room color paint palettes

Perfect “mood” palettes from Clark and Kensington

This one’s my favorite – I’m picking colors for our living room and dining room, and this is what I’m settled on: a vanilla-cream on the walls, and white trim. Look at the great options I can use for accents!

Plus I can take this palette when I’m shopping for bookshelves, choosing photos to hang on the walls, and picking out our new couch to make sure everything complements the room.

Smith & Edwards Paint Department gets a Makeover!

These new color palettes are just a tiny part of the big changes in our paint department! That’s right, after years of helping thousands of Utah homeowners improve their home’s appearance – we’ve gotten a makeover, too!

Check out the amazing new lighting – much easier to see true colors and match paints:
(old and new paint counter)

Before…

After…

It’s so bright and clean… we love it! How about you?

The reason for our remodel? We’ve brought in a new line of paint, Valspar, which is a premium paint. It’s got amazing pigments that give you brighter, more vibrant color!

Valspar comes in 2 grades. Aspire is a mid grade paint that’s similar to Clark+Kensington and is pretty durable. Optimus is the high-end Valspar paint and primer, and it’s incredibly durable. You can clean lipstick off flat Optimus without leaving a trace! – and it has great coverage.

Randy, our Paint department manager, will be happy to help you pick the perfect grade of paint!

And because they’re part of the same family, we can exactly color-match Valspar to Clark+Kensington and Ace Royal paints you’ve already got at home.

Clark + Kensington was recently rated #1 among leading paint brands by Consumer Reports. So you know you’re going to get the best paint for your project here at Smith & Edwards!

Sample Paint Pints

Here’s something more you can do than just tack that color palette up on your wall. Just tell us what colors you’d like to test drive, and we’ll mix them up for you and set you up with sample pints of Valspar or Clark+Kensington paint for just $4.99.

That way you can really get a feel for how the colors will affect the mood of the room, how they’ll enhance your furniture and cozy or freshen the feel of the space. You could get a sheet of chipboard and mock up what the room would look like – that way you get a much better idea than just 3″ paint chip swatches.

And while we’re probably the only ones who are excited about this, we’ve also got new displays and signage to match our new modern look! It’s like getting new sconces for us – aren’t they amazing?

(we think so!)

And since a lot of gluing seems to happen whenever there’s remodeling, we collected all our glues and plopped them right next to the paint so they’re easy to find. From E6000 to wood glues and of course Gorilla Glue, you’ll find the glue your projects need.

Come on in & visit!

And just wait… there is something exciting that Randy and the paint department can do with Valspar paints that they’ve never been able to do before! Come in and ask them about it, or wait to see the in-store demo we’ve got coming up in 2014. (Hint: it’s something to do with chalk!)

So come on in to Smith & Edwards and check out our huge range of paints and colors for home inspiration. The Paint department is just past the main entrance around aisles 19-23. Randy and Brenda can’t wait to help you find and match the perfect hues for your living room, dining room, bathroom, bedroom, or kitchen!

Smith and Edwards Paint Dept will get you the results you want!

Come on in and let’s pick out your colors!

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Take a look at the Handy Bucket Builder in our Paint Department

October 17, 2013 - posted by Rose Marion

This little lid is the coolest thing to hit our Paint Department since we can remember!

Handy Bucket Builder shelf and display at Smith and Edwards

(Click to view larger!)

We use these bucket lids ourselves in the store

Randy, our Paint department manager, thinks you’ll love this product – and he’d know, he’s used it himself to build a whole nursery!

Yep, our outdoor garden center this spring and summer was built with Handy Bucket Builder lids, our Smith & Edwards Ace buckets, and 2 x 12 plywood placed flat on the lids, letting us set out our plants and flowers in tiers outside.

We used to build our garden center using lumber and cinderblocks. The cinder blocks were heavy – and they’d take up a ton of space, pallets and pallets, when it was time to take the garden center down for fall.

Pansies on Handy Bucket Builder at Smith and Edwards

Metal 2x4s work just as well as wood ones!

These lids stack up on top of each other in a column, and they’re lightweight – we hardly have to clear out any room to store them!

Come see these bucket lids in action

The Handy Bucket Builder Lid snaps on either the top or the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket. The buckets can be used upside down or not, so it’s ok if your bucket has trash, paint, wood, gravel, or sawdust in it. In fact, adding weight to the buckets will help them stay in place.

We built this sturdy shelf with just scrap wood and the Handy Bucket Builder lids and 5-gallon buckets.

We built this sturdy shelf with just scrap wood, stacked on Handy Bucket Builder lids and 5-gallon buckets. Come see for yourself!

We’ve got a display here at Smith & Edwards between aisles 9 and 10 so you can come see the Handy Bucket Builder lids in action. To make the display you see, we stacked one pair of buckets on top of another pair of buckets, with the lids inbetween. Then, we placed two 2 by 4s in the handy bucket builder lids. Lastly, we topped with a sheet of plywood. Simple as that, we’ve got a steady shelf that can hold a lot of weight – and it hardly took any time at all! You can make a more secure fit with screws and a drill – we didn’t have to, it was steady enough as-is.

You can also use 2×3’s, which will do the same job with less weight to carry.

Uses for the Handy Bucket Builder Lids

This is great for camping, taking to kids’ soccer or lacrosse games, and for bringing on trips with your RV or trailer. Storage is simple – simply stack up your buckets, stack the lids on top, and stand your lumber next to them.

Handy Bucket Builder lids are also a great way for you to store your Emergency Preparedness supplies as well as Food Storage. Keep your canned or emergency food on shelves you can build quickly with lids, buckets, and lumber. Anywhere you need shelving that might have to get taken down or moved around – the Handy Bucket Builder lids are gonna do the job.

And they’re infinitely reusable, too.

You can build your setup to be as temporary or long-standing as you like.

The lids are made from a flexible and shatterproof type of plastic that’ll hold up through countless uses. You can even drill through the lid at indicated points for the best security.

Come in and get your lids today!

Come on in and get your lids at Smith and Edwards, they’re located between aisles 9 and 10 on our main aisle of the store. And, you can also order yours online!

Handy Bucket Builder Lid: $10.99 order yours online
Smith & Edwards Ace 5 Gallon Buckets: $3.50