Make your own chalk board & book pumpkins

Fun projects, and easier than you think!

For the chalk board I bought a few old picture framed paintings from the thrift store. Went to Home Depot for the Chalk Board paint and had them tint it the Teal color. This paint is awesome! You can have it tinted in several colors as you can see on the box. Paint your walls, doors, picture frames, anything!

I just taped up the frames, used a foam brush and painted over the cute picture (sorry), let dry and paint again. I painted on 4 coats.

I have used this paint before on the "Bubbles" I used for my daughters wedding wall for people to hold up. I just cut out the bubbles from stiff poster board, and painted several coats of the black paint.

These can be used all year long when your taking pictures of your family, first day of school, etc:

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Book Page Pumpkins

I know, some are tortured by me killing a book, I am too, I love to read! As I made my book wreaths I struggled too, but like I said in those posts I bought old books from a thrift store, books I would never read, ever...so it made me feel alright about it. :)

So, you will need:
Books, several sizes if you wish.
Hot glue gun/glue.
Sharp utility knife.
Cutting board.
Pencil.
Twigs.
Ribbons - optional.
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Take the front and back cover off your book:

With a pencil draw out your half template of a pumpkin:

Carefully cut around your pencil mark with the utility knife-use a cutting board underneath:

It will take you some time to go through all the pages, and some will be rough looking when your done, if you do not like the rough edges, use some scissors to cut them:

Once your done cutting through, grab your glue gun and stick/twig (I just went outside and found a ton on my lawn lol) and glue to the back binding of your book:

Also glue a few pages together around the twig, this helps conceal it better.

You will now want to glue towards the binding (not the outer page part) of several pages together, then stick a clamp of some sort to hold the pages together-I did this to help the book pages want to go the opposite direction they normally want to go, this helps to fan it out. Doesn't take long, maybe 5 minutes or so:

Now you can add some ribbon to jazz it up if you wish:

Or leave it plain? Just make a few and put them together for a fun table setting or on your mantle, or? Just have fun!

~V