Chalk-based paint and clear glaze – who knew?  And just in time for Easter!  My inspiration piece came from Pinterest, naturally.  As soon as I saw the cute bunny decoration on this site, I thought……I can do this!  So, I did.  http://divaofdiy.com/easter-decorations-rustic-bunny-sign/

First off, my husband and I are distributors for an awesome (we think) chalk-based paint manufactured in the Missouri Ozarks by a company called Missouri Limestone Paint Company.  As of this writing, they have over 30 beautiful colors and we stock most of them in several stores in our area.  Of course, we practice what we preach, so we paint with it, too.  Be sure to visit our website to learn more about us and the paint.  http://sharsumpaint.com  You can follow us on facebook, too.  https://www.facebook.com/sharsumpaint

This is what we did….did I take step by step pics?  No…..so you’ll just have to read carefully on this one.

1.  We already had the paint and clear glaze.  You know where we get our paint now and the clear glaze we use is Dutch Boy, purchased at Menards a few months ago.
2. The boards we used to make the sign came from Lowes.  They are 1/4″  x by 2 1/2″ poplar boards.  The ones we used came 24″ long.  We bought 6 of them to make 2 signs.  We just cut them in half.  Then we bought 2 – 1/4″ x 1 1/2″ boards that came 48″ long.  We cut four of them ( about 14 1/2″ long) to use as braces for stapling to the back of the sign.  The finished sign is approximately 12″ wide by 15″ long.
3. Before we stapled the boards together we painted them (front, back, and sides) with the paint/glaze combination.  I love, love, love how the glaze transformed the paint into soft pastel colors.  I just experimented with the combinations.  I didn’t need much of any of the colors as I only had 2 12″ boards to paint with each color. I’m guessing I used maybe 2 Tablespoons of glaze and about a 1/2 teaspoon of paint….but you just have to figure out your own color preference on that.  I love how the paint/glaze combination produces almost a color stain….so that the wood grain of the boards shows through.
   1. Possum Grape Jam – this is usually a deep purple but just a bit added to the glaze made the darker pink color.
   2. English Bluebells – this, mixed with the glaze, created the lighter blue color.
   3. Trading Post – this color and the glaze produced the light turquoise.
   4. Dandelion and Field Corn – I used a little combination of both of these colors to produce the light yellow when mixed with the glaze.
   5. Effie’s Lilac – Usually a light blush pinkish/lilac – I love the light pink produced with the glaze.
   6. Evening Shade – this is a new color I hadn’t even tried yet.  It is usually a beautiful dark green but the glaze lightened it up and reminded me of Spring grass.  I’m now trying to think of something else to paint with this mixture.
4.  It was now time to staple the boards together.  We just decided on which side we wanted for the face of the sign and turned them over.  I used the light blue to represent sky and the the green to represent grass and the other colors were just random, trying not to have the pinks together.  Then we made sure they fit tight next to each other and stapled the smaller boards to each one.  We probably could have used glue, too, but we didn’t.
5. Time to make the bunny.  I’m not an artist, so I usually use a stencil. I have a Silhouette machine and usually use contact paper as stencils.  It usually works great.  Sticks down nice and even and I seldom ever get bleed through.  However, contact paper wasn’t liking the slightly rough, raw boards and wasn’t sticking well enough to stencil.  So, I just used the bunny outline and traced around it with white chalk.  Then filled it in with our white paint called January.  That worked like a charm as I found I can paint with the lines.  This is the template I used to make my bunny.  But I just saw this one.  It looks more like the one used on Pinterest.  It has the little feet on it.
6. The final touch is the cute little bunny tail.  I used white Bernat blanket yarn to make a pom pom and just kept trimming it until I got the size I wanted and hot glued it on.  This tutorial using a piece of cardboard is basically what I did when I made mine.

That’s it!  If you make one, it is fun to experiment with the different colors you get when mixing them with glaze.  Of course, we love our Missouri Limestone Paint, but any chalk-based paint should work.

If you do make one, be sure to mention it in the comments and send me a pic of yours.  I’ll be sure to post it.