Make your own chalkboard paint with grout!

Chalkboards are all the rage now as they are being used for wedding signages, menu boards for restaurants or even as home decorations! If you're a Pinterest fan like us here in Square Art, I'm sure you have been following all the beautiful typography and creative uses of chalkboard paint with glee. Imagine how happy we were to know that we can actually make our own chalkboard paint and in ANY COLOUR that we want?

Photo Credit by A Beautiful Mess (click on picture to redirect to page)

We stumbled upon this DIY project by A Beautiful Mess on Pinterest (where else? :D) and cannot wait to try it out ourselves. Square Art currently sells white grout at RM8.00 for a 100gm pack.  For this project, you will only need a tablespoon-full, so that means you can have more than one chalkboard paint to try on! Yay! Try it out today! :)

Razzle dazzle 'em old things!

A lot of customers who drop by our booth during craft fairs ask what can they do with the tiles. Sometimes I draw a blank on how to answer, not because I don't know how, but because the answer is that it's limitless! So, I proceed to tell them about the easiest projects they can start out with. Photo frames. A lot of photo frames we are buying these days (think: IKEA) are either in black/white or in solid colours. Why not jazz them up with some sparkly tiles to match the interior of your house or the mood of the picture? 

Let me show you some example of some razzle-dazzlin' that I manage to do yesterday. If you will remember, I did a Home Improvement Challenge post about 2 weeks back asking readers to choose which one I should work on, a black vase, some coasters of a photo frame. In the end, it was decided that the photo frames needed some colours and later I did try out the coasters to see how it would like.

The frame before the dazzlin'

The frame after some dazzlin'

The reason why this is such a simple project is because of the straight lines functioning as borders around the frame. The tiles are currently sold in 5 x 5 mm squares and no cutting is required. All you have to do is get the colour combination that works for your frame and stick it. It didn't take me very long to finish this project :)

Now, for the coasters. I got some "pearl white" tiles to work with to achieve a "sea-shell" look on my coasters. I only did one so far - have a look at them:

Here's the plain-looking pear-shaped coaster.

Sticking the pieces together. The round corners were a bit tricky.

Voila! It's done!

I'm not sure if hubby would let me bedazzle the rest of them though!

So, there you have it folks! It's really easy, once you get pass the first 20 tiles or so. Why don't you start on some projects left aside this weekend? :)

Mosaic-ify your pictures!

Why not have some fun with your personal pictures and create mosaic art with them? While browsing the Internet looking for something like this, I stumbled upon Andrea Mosaic that offers a freeware that allows you to create picture mosaics! All you have to download it, choose your original picture and select a whole folder of pictures to choose from as your tiles. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

It's very simple and easy to follow, here are two examples of what I created with the freeware:

 


This is a picture of lovely little house in Burano, Italy. Using the freeware, I created this picture mosaic on the right using 500 tiles of pictures from my collection. 

Use it for memorable events, then, print it out, frame it and hang on your wall. This is a picture of my wedding using 3000 tiles, all from folders of my wedding pictures. 

Try it out today! :) ^CL

Things you can make......

... with our mosaic tiles...! :) I'll be sharing inspirations and projects that you can make easily with our range of mosaic tiles! :) 

Remember the tip I gave on egg containers? You can place the mosaic tiles in individual spaces to organize the colours and keep everything neat. Makes it easier for me (& you) to select and pick out the colours we want to use :)

For this project, I'm making a mosaic tile frame! You can easily use any old frames that you already have or buy one for this project :) 

Step 1 : Preparation - Clean the tiles with a damp cloth to wipe off dust or sand dust. 

Step 2 : Select the colours that you have in mind for your project! :)

Step 3 : Using a good double-sided tape, apply the tape to the frame and peel it off to reveal the sticky                  tape

Step 4 : Pick up the tiles by colour and arrange them on the frame!

It's that easy! And a fun way to de-stress :)

Voila! The finished project! Isn't it pretty!!! :)

You can purchase our mosaic tiles & kits at http://facebook.com/SquareArt

Hope you like this project & will attempt it on your own! :)

^ET