Homemade Chalk Paint

 

Just a quick note: we do not use this recipe for painting furniture.  It’s just an easy way to mix up acrylic paint to have a chalky finish for small craft projects.  ~Amy & Vicki

Hi everyone!  It’s been a few weeks since we’ve posted a craft (sorry!).  My youngest brother Mike is getting married in September, and we’re hand making their invitations, programs and table favors.  We had to put the blog on hold for a couple weeks to focus on getting them done.

Today we decided to play around with a recipe for homemade chalk paint.  We wanted a paint with a matte or chalky finish to paint a glass jar.  We wanted it to look shabby chic and a little worn with a bit of a powdery finish.  We’ve seen recipes for homemade chalk paint using Plaster of Paris or Calcium Carbonate, but we didn’t have any of those on hand and didn’t want to buy them just to paint one jar.

After a bit of searching, we found a simple recipe from Lacy Meeker at Chosen: the Blog.  Lacy mixed acrylic paint with corn starch and water.  Easy enough, right?  So we gave it a try and loved the result.

                             *Recipe adapted from Chosen: The Blog

 

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First, we painted the jar with a layer of Gesso to prep it and give the paint something to stick to.  The Gesso dries fairly quickly, but we’re impatient and used a heat tool to speed up the process.  (We found the jars at Target in the dollar bins).

Once the Gesso was dry, we added two coats of our homemade chalk paint.  To create our color, we used just under an ounce of Americana acrylic paint in “Bahama Blue”, and added just a little Americana acrylic paint in “Turquoise Blue”.  We dried the first coat with our heat tool before adding the second, then dried it again when finished.

This muted, chalky finish was exactly what we were going for.

We used sandpaper to distress the jar and remove a bit of the paint.  This actually took a little more work than we were expecting.  The Gesso really did its job prepping the glass so the paint would stay put.

And there you have it!  An easy, inexpensive way to change the look of your acrylic paint.  Happy crafting!

{Note}: A reader let us know that she tried using Anita’s All Purpose acrylic paint from Hobby Lobby and it did not work at all with this recipe.  She tried again using FolkArt acrylic paint (which is what we used) and said it worked much better.  We’re unsure of the results with any other brand of acrylic paint so if you have the choice, choose FolkArt brand.

If you make a version of this craft, we’d love to see it!  Please share with us in our comment section or upload a picture to our Facebook page and we may highlight your craft in a future post!

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