Okay, so Priyanka and I were discussing something and we felt the need for a board to write and discuss. I have been to these art and craft stores in Bangalore and but never seen them having a Blackboard / Chalkboard. These shops generally have whiteboards on which marker pens are used to write. But they do not have the charm of the old Blackboard we used to have in school and college. We searched for Blackboards but did not find shops having Blackboards. I have seen people selling the foldable ones, the one you can roll like a chart, but that’s not what we were looking for.

Finally we decided to make one ourselves. But we did not know how to make one so we resorted to Google Baba. There were two approaches, either to buy Blackboard Paint and paint the board or to make your own blackboard paint. Getting blackboard paint turned out to be a little difficult since its not easily available in shops and you have to get if from manufacturers who sell in bulk. So we decided to make our own blackboard paint. We got all the material and experimented 🙂 I will tell you later how it turned out.

Here’s what you need –

A piece of board/wood which you want to convert into Blackboard Plaster of Paris powder Acrylic Color of your choice and instead of Blackboard you can make a Blueboard, Greenboard, Redboard or whatever board you want 🙂 A brush to paint the board Water A bowl to mix stuff Measuring spoon or cup Stir stick or spoon Chalk to write A piece of cloth for cleaning A sheet of newspaper

So, are you all set to make your own Blackboard? Yay!

The recipe is very simple. I had some pieces of plywood lying with me. So I decided to make two Blackboard out of these unused plywood and yes we decided to make it Black so I had Black Acrylic color.

Let’s start with the paint. Plaster of Paris, Paint and Water needs to be mixed together. The combination is 3 parts paint, 2 parts Plaster of Paris, and 1 part water.

First measure and put the Plaster of Paris into a bowl (2 part).

Then add 1 part water to the Plastic of Paris.

Mix this well until you get out all the lumps. Once the mixture is smooth, add 3 part of Black acrylic paint. Mix it well until you get a consistent mixture.

The blackoard paint is ready and you should get ready to paint the board 🙂 If you think the mixture is too thick, feel free to add a little water or paint.

Put the board on top of newspaper so that you do not dirty the workplace. Start painting the board from left to light using the brush, make sure that you paint from end to end in a single stroke to make sure that board is smooth once it dries out.

I painted my plywood using 3 coats of this homemade blackboard paint. After every coat I kept it to dry and it dried pretty quickly.

While waiting for the paint to dry, cover the paint in the bowl nicely so that it doesn’t dry. Make sure that you do not make a lot of paint as it will harden quickly and will not be usable anymore.

Paint again once the board has dried.

Once you are done with the 3rd cote, leave the board for some time. I know you would be eager to write the first words on the board, but give it some time.

Clean the work area and the tools. Once you make sure the board is completely dried, go ahead and write some nice stuff on it.

Mine turned out to be nice 🙂 I was happy with it and not we have two new homemade blackboards 🙂

I will be writing more about my experiments here and if you want you can subscribe to my blog to be updated.

Share your experience here when you try to make one 🙂

Enjoy!