Chalkboard Stencil

We have been working on transforming the office space in our home into a playroom for B...and mainly a space for all of his toys. We only have a couple of more things to do and it will be finished. This past weekend I worked on creating a chalkboard train on the wall. I took photos as I walked through the process. It began with me traveling back in time to my 8th grade art class...

I first printed out a couple of train silhouettes from the internet and since I didn't like the direction they were going in, I used their negative. Then I taped down a huge piece of wrapping paper on our dining room table. I knew that I was going to need to establish some markers for the size the train will end up being relative to the printed train. I decided to use salad plates as the train "wheels". I was then able to use the wheels as a basis for all of my other dimensions and only had to freehand a couple of parts. As you can see from the photo below, I used several things I had lying around...a level, a Harry Potter book, a boot box lid, etc.


Once I had it all drawn out in pencil, I went back over it in black marker and then cut the stencil out. By this time it was late at night and I knew the project could be postponed till the next day.




I then taped the stencil up on the wall and traced around it in pencil. Then I removed the stencil and started filling the shape in with chalkboard paint. I ended up doing 2 coats of the paint with a large brush and then going back around the edges with a smaller brush so that I would have as even of lines as I could muster.


Voila! B hasn't seen it yet but he did carry the printed train pages around the house all weekend after he saw them. He kept saying they were his choo choo trains.