Confession: I’ve taken the “before” pictures for this makeover no less than five different times. Every time I walk through the living room (which is every time I go upstairs or check the mail) I am underwhelmed by its boringness and uselessness. We live in an old house, designed for formal entertaining (you can see the house tour here, although we’ve changed almost every room since then) which is fantastic when it comes to throwing parties but not so great for every day life. We don’t use the front door and we almost never use the dining room, so the front of the house has become a catch-all for junk. There isn’t even a couch in the living room – the free one I got off Craigslist went out with the trash before Evan’s 1st birthday and I haven’t found something I like/can afford. Which means for the last year (and then some), our living room has looked like this:

I know it was built for afternoon teas and dinner parties, but living in half our house is stupid – why feel cramped when we have an extra 300+ square feet of EMPTY SPACE to spread out in? And why do I keep insisting on using it as a FORMAL living room, when almost none of our living is formal?

So my mission was two fold:
1. Make our living room both more functional and more fun and
2. Don’t spend any money

Enter Pinterest.

{handprint art, chalkboard table, bright colored room, fabric garland, covered canvas, button letter}

And here’s how it looks now:

Breakdown:
-I bought the canvases from Michael’s when they were on sale AND I had a coupon, to save for a day when I was feeling creative. The striped ones are tissue paper attached with spray adhesive.
-All the paint, felt and ribbons are from previous projects, especially Caroline’s Nursery.
-The bright colored pillow covers are from Life’s Candy, my wonderful friend Mae’s shop. I relocated them from our entrance bench.
-The fabric on the garland was tablecloths at Little Evan’s 2nd birthday.
-The plates are straight up dinner plates from our cabinet, purchased at Walmart in 2001.
6. The empty frame was in our basement.
7. I bought the vases at Target for $3.24 each back in March to fill in the empty mantle.
8. The coffee table was in the basement, the blue chair was in the attic and the toys were in the toy box.

Since the coffee table is black you can’t really see the chalkboard paint unless I’ve drawn on it, so all it takes is a quick swipe with a damp paper towel and we have our grown-up piece of furniture back. The baskets underneath neatly hide all the toys and the chalk.

So paint, buttons, fabric, and some repurposing turned our boring wasted space into a cute, usable room. Now I just need to find a small couch, some big comfy floor pillows and a DVD player for that TV and we might actually start spending some time in there!

Of course I finished this just in time to change it all again for Christmas. Maybe we’ll go with a rainbow theme for the holidays this year.

I was daydreaming through the Pottery Barn catalog a few weeks ago and I noticed a solid black globe with chalk writing on it (of course, now that I want to show you I can’t find it online). What is it with PB and their obsession with chalkboard paint? Don’t they realize any idiot can just buy a can of that stuff and paint things with it instead of spending hundreds of dollars on the ones from the catalog? Although I guess the kinds of people who order entire rooms straight from Pottery Barn are too busy playing tennis and vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard and rolling in hundred dollar bills to bother buying paint. So it’s left to people like me to write chalkboard tray and chalkboard globe tutorials. I even fancied the globe up a bit to make it more fun.

I am the wordiest, most rambling blogger ever, so to make this easier on people just looking for a tutorial all the REALLY important parts are in bold.

Materials:
Globe
Chalkboard paint
Contact paper
Scissors
Paintbrush
Printer and paper (optional)

I actually own 6 (SIX!) old, inaccurate globes in various stages of deterioration. I used the worst of them for this project, since the other ones are kind of cool. But as my mother pointed out, globes are some of the most useless dust catchers ever so don’t feel too bad about painting over one. Especially one that still says “U.S.S.R.”

Also on this globe: East/West Germany and Burma

Although you can tell it’s not THAT old because Burkina Faso is called Burkina Faso and not Upper Volta (it was changed in 1984).

She's in the Peace Corps

Instead of covering the whole globe with black paint and then drawing my own world on it (which would also be super cute) I decided to try leaving some of the map showing through. For my first globe I used my son’s name:

I tried printing it directly onto make-your-own sticker paper (also known as 8 1/2 x 11 shipping label paper from Staples). This didn’t work out so well, as you’ll see that in a minute. Then I cut out the letters and stuck them on the globe.

Unfortunately, when I painted over the letters, the sticker paper absorbed the paint…

…So when I tried to peel the stickers off the top layer came up but the adhesive stuck to the globe.

Using several different kinds of knives (a regular old table knife ended up working best) I managed to scrape MOST of it off and only damaged the map underneath in a couple of places. I figured this was my trial run – and the globe I’m going to let my toddler play with – so it’s not the end of the world. Ahahaha! Globe joke!!

Luckily I was able to try again.

This one was in even worse shape - the equator is held together with scotch tape

Globe #2 is missing it’s little time zone circle disk, which meant I didn’t have to take it off the stand to paint all the way to the top. (Globe #1 popped right off the stand but I discovered it’s way easier to paint most of it while it’s still on it. Less rolling!)

Here’s the way this project actually works best: I used contact paper I found at Target to make stickers. It was with the shelf paper that comes in cute patterns (on the aisle with the mops) but I picked the most basic clear kind to ensure it was just one layer and wouldn’t come apart like the label paper. I printed out the word “LOVE” with a heart for the “O” on regular paper, then traced it backwards onto the paper side of the contact paper. That way when you peel the paper off and stick it on the globe the letters face the right way.

Then I painted it with two coats of the chalkboard paint…

…and peeled off the contact paper to see the map underneath!

Now my useless dust collectors are cuter, chalkboard dust collectors.

Here are the tips I have to make this as easy as possible:
1. Choose a font or shape that doesn’t require a ton of detailed cutting. I couldn’t even get the center part of the “A” in Evan to come out right, which is why it’s not there. Besides, you want big sections of the map to show through.
2. Don’t make your shapes/letters too large or the contact paper won’t lie flat when you stick it to the globe. It’s important to get the edges stuck down really well to prevent the paint from seeping underneath.
3. When the paint DOES get under the contact paper, you can veeeeery gently scrape it off with a blade or craft knife. It’s easiest if you do it as soon as possible, so peel the stickers off as soon as the paint is dry(ish).
4. Be sure to follow the instructions for dry-time on the chalkboard paint before you try using chalk on it, or you’ll end up with permanent marks. They’re not joking about that.
5. I bought all my globes for mere dollars at our local flea market, which is kind of a lousy flea market but apparently a gold mine for old globes. I’ve also seen them at antique stores but those tend to be a little pricier because they’re in better condition or actual antiques instead of junk. Shipping a globe is cost prohibitive, so your best bet is garage or yard sales or a trashy flea market in your area. Just keep your eyes open!

Other cool ideas – just paint the ocean or the continents with chalkboard paint so you can color in the rest however you want. Get really ambitious and outline the continents in another color. Use painter’s tape to make stripes and then write cute, clever things all around the world. Your creativity is only limited by your access to cheap globes!

But hey, even if you end up paying $30 for one at an antique store that’s still a LOT cheaper than $297.50. Yikes.