DIY Chalkboard Lettering

I always find myself admiring the fine penmanship written on chalkboard menus at Starbucks (am I  the only nut that does this?) How the heck do they get it to look so perfect and professional??  Probably by hiring a professional.   Or maybe every Starbucks in America has an employee blessed with perfect free hand penmanship.  Me?  Not so lucky - chicken scratches.  According to the Urban Dictionary: a description of poor handwriting that resembles the marks left in sand by a gaggle of chickens.  Yep, that's me.  I'm sure besides hiring a professional there are a variety of ways and techniques for doing your own chalkboard lettering with all sorts of beautiful fonts.  Today I'm sharing the approach I took in an attempt to give hope to all you lovelies out there who are cursed with horrible penmanship.

There are loads of chalkboard fonts you can download for free online.  I did a Google search and chose Return to Sender for the header and KG Skinny Latte for the days of the week. Once you have your fonts create a text document and print the words out onto paper in the actual size you want them to appear on the chalkboard.  Lay the papers out on the board to determine placement and spacing.

Then rub the entire back side of each piece of paper with regular chalk.

Place the paper chalk side down onto the board and trace each letter with a pencil.

When you remove the paper you'll see that the pressure from the pencil creates a faint template of the font.

I used a white chalk marker to finish off the lettering for the Dinner Specials header and the days of the week since I plan to keep them up on the board for a while.  Chalk markers are much harder to erase than regular chalk (*tip: I did a quick test and a Magic Eraser easily removed the marker from the board).  You can find these markers at your local craft store.

I used a Q-tip and a little water to remove any of the access regular chalk that got on the board during the tracing process.

I repeated the same process for the days of the week.

I chose to put the days of the week on the left hand side and plan to use regular chalk to write our dinners on the right hand side.  It will be easy to erase the dinners each week without smudging my pretty days of the week font.

Homemade pizzas tonight!  I love a great pizza night to kick start the weekend.  Hope you have a great weekend! xo :)