After about a second and a half of searching for first birthday ideas, you quickly discover that birthday chalkboards are trendy, trendy, trendy at the moment.  Even though I try to avoid jumping on every single trend, I really wanted to have these for the Baby Dudes’ first birthday.  The thing is they contain a lot of great info, and with twins, sometimes the little details run together in the first year haze.  I thought making these little chalkboards would be a good way to memorialize some of the fun details of our little men’s first year.  I’m a fantastic DIYer in my mind, but not so much in reality, so this will be a Chalkboards for Artisic Dummies Like Me kind of tutorial.


I’m still making little adjustments, but I’m close to happy!

Supplies:  I bought chalkboards at Hobby Lobby for less than $10 each.  I also bought regular white chalk and two packs of chalk markers.  The chalkboard markers are more permanent than chalk, but you can still wipe them off with water.  If you’re making more than one chalkboard, I recommend doubling up on the markers.  It takes more than you think!

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1.  Dirty up your chalkboard, if new.  The first thing I did was “season” my chalkboard. Because they were brand new, I wanted to dirty them up a bit.  I’d like to say this was for some deep artistic purpose, but really I just wanted to be able to fix my inevitable mistakes without it looking so obvious. I covered the chalkboards a couple of times and wiped it off in between.  They still looked almost brand new, but it gave me just a bit of a safety net.

2.  Print the name (or whatever you’re working on) and cover the back of the paper with a heavy layer of chalk.  Choose a font for the name at the top and print it in the size you want.  Now, this is where things are going to start sounding weird, but . . . turn the printed paper over to the white side and cover it in chalk.  At first, I just put a thin layer, but I quickly learned I needed to put more on the back of the paper.

Cover the back of the paper with chalk.

3.  Tape the paper on your chalkboard and carefully trace the letters with a pencil.  Try not to touch the paper anymore than necessary as it will transfer chalk to the chalkboard.

You should end up with a very light outline of the name on the chalkboard, like this:

4.  Color in the name.  I just started with my chalk markers and colored in the letters entirely, though it would certainly be cute to add an artistic flair.  Elliot’s name took up the majority of the chalkboard, but Finn’s is sufficiently short that I added some “1”s with fireworks.

I decided the “red” looked too pink when it dried, so eventually I just colored over it with green.

5.  Draw your “frames.”  I applied a very scientific method for this . . . and grabbed one of the boys’ books that looked about the right size for the sections on the right of the board.  I traced the lines with regular chalk since it would be easier to fix if I messed up.  When I was sure I like it, I traced right over the chalk with the chalk markers.  For the circles, I just traced a couple different sizes of bottles we had.  The tooth I just winged by looking at inspiration pictures. I left everything on this side blank to fill in right before their birthday for the most updated info. After that, I just considered what I wanted to put in a section and used paper or a book to trace how big I thought that section should be.  When making or buying something for the boys, I generally try to keep things similar or coordinating, but a little different.  I wanted each chalkboard to have a little bit of a different layout.  On a whim, I drew out a number “1” on Elliot’s board to use as the defining lines for the bigger portion of the board.  I’m generally happy with it, though I think I if I had spend more time on it, it would look a little better. Mama was getting tired of chalkboards by that point.

6.    Fill in all the fun details.  I loved this part; it was so fun to think of all their favorites and try to work in everything I wanted to put down.  The one thing I wish I would have added on Finn’s was a section for nicknames because he has sooo many. I just free-handed all the writing because I knew tracing everything would take more time than I could dedicate to this project, but you certainly apply the same technique as described above to end up with a more artistic board that utilizes many fonts.

They’re not perfect, but I like them and I’m glad to have all the information down in a somewhat permanent form.  I still need to clean up a few smudges, touch up a few letters, and add in the height, weight, and teeth info, but I’m almost finished with this project and ready to move to the next one.  Even though they’re all over the internet right now, it’s fun to know that probably no one at our party will have ever seen one.  That’s the beauty of inviting only older family; all my Pinterest fails will seem like total Pinterest Wins to them!

Did you jump on any big trends for your LO’s first birthday?

Mrs. Blue’s First Birthday Party part 2 of 3

1. Two-By-Two: The Baby Dudes' Birthday Plans by Mrs. Blue
2. DIY Birthday Chalkboards by Mrs. Blue
3. Two-By-Two: Noah's Ark Birthday Party by Mrs. Blue