20 Minute Tuesday | DIY Faux Chalkboard

One of my favorite items at my daughter’s Horses and Hairbows party last month was the oversized menu board behind the food table. Everyone at the party commented on it and wanted to know how long it took me to letter a chalkboard with that much detail. Well here’s the secret – I didn’t hand draw a single letter and that’s not even a real chalkboard!

I have horrible penmanship. Actually, that’s an understatement, I have horrendous penmanship. There is no way in 1,000,000 years that I would be able to handdraw a semi-decent menu onto a real chalkboard, but I really wanted a fancy menuboard to be my food table backdrop at my daughter’s party so I had to come up with an alternative.

I thought about painting a piece of plywood with black paint, maybe even chalkboard paint, so I could rub some chalk on it to make it look more authentic and then applying vinyl to it. However, plywood is heavy, and I am lazy.

That left me with one other choice – faking it! So I opened up Photoshop Elements, purchased a piece of foam core, and got to work!

*the designing & ordering of the menu graphic is NOT included in the 20 minutes of this project*

Supplies:

32″x40″ piece of black foam core (that’s the largest they had at Hobby Lobby)
36″x48″ engineering print with menu printed on it
double-sided tape
scissors
exacto knife & cutting surface

In PSE I opened up a new blank file that measured 1 inches wider and taller than my piece of foam core (33×41 in this instance). Make the background black and start adding all your different menu items to the board. I used every single “chalkboard” font that I could find on Pinterest for my menu board, but you could stick to just several coordinating fonts if you wanted. If you don’t have PSE you can also make your file in Picasa or PicMonkey, you’ll just need to open MS Paint and save a large black rectangle as a .jpg to use as your base photo to edit.

I saved my file as a high quality jpeg, uploaded it to Staples, and ordered it as the largest engineering print they offer, 36×48. I picked it up in my local store, but they also ship. The huge print cost me around $7.

Once you’ve gathered all your supplies you are ready to make your faux chalkboard menu board!

Run a line or two of double-sided tape around all 4 edges of your foam core. You can work in small area if you like. I did one short side first, then the two long sides together, and finished the remaining short side last.

Carefully lay your engineering print on to your taped foam core. To make sure I was doing it straight I cut off one side of the white boarders so I had a clean side to line everything up with.

Flip your board over and place a cutting surface underneath the edge. My self-healing cutting mat isn’t large enough to fit the entire board on so I just moved it along as I went.

Using an exacto knife, trim off the extra engineering paper.

And that’s it!! You are done!

The ink on the engineering print is solid like in a glossy photo which gives you that authentic chalkboard look without any added extra work.
Since this menu board is so light you can hang it up anywhere (even using command hooks or mounting strips) and not have to worry about needing nails and making holes!

20 Minute Tuesday | DIY Faux Chalkboard

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