Hey Guys!

I love a Before and After picture, so here’s one for you:

I like to visit my local Carboot Sale at the Weekends and recently picked up a small unit that I wanted to paint. It was covered in varnish and I made a bit of a mess of the drawer front trying to get the existing paint and varnish out of the nooks and crannies. I heard that Chalk Paint covers varnish with no problem and apparently you can even paint onto non-porous surfaces, such as, plastic, glass and metal.

I found the price of Chalk Paint to be really quite high, around £20 for a litre, cheaper alternatives to the brand names could only save me a couple of pounds. I figured that there must be a way to make this stuff ourselves, there must be some kind of chalk powder to add to normal paint, right?

Well, Yes there is, I found a couple of articles where people had made their own from a powder that has a couple of different names. I looked for this ‘Calcium Carbonate’ or ‘Limestone Powder’ on Ebay and chose a 500g bag for £3.99, the seller said it would make up to 10 litres of Chalk Paint, that’s much more like it!

Following the articles I read on DIY Chalk Paint, I added some water to my powder to form a paste then added my paint. 2 of the articles gave different ratios so I chose the midway point between the 2 and used a ratio of 1 part powder to 3 parts paint although I think 4 parts paint would work well too. I used regular white emulsion paint which also makes it nice and easy to create a distressed look by just rubbing the edges of my furniture with a damp cloth, you don’t need to use any sandpaper. However, if your finished piece is likely to come into contact with water or is going to be handled you will probably need to add a top coat of wax or clear varnish.

Once you have your white chalk paint made, you can take small portions and add your re-inkers or spritzes to it to create your own collection of coloured chalk paints ready for any craft project.