In between trips (because summer is all about travel, right?), I’ve been working in my new library to get ready for next school year. In addition to weeding and genrefying the fiction collection, I also had a few aesthetic projects in mind. I feel like there has to be some visible change in a space to get students excited about other changes. Back in 2010 I did some mid-year updates at the old CMSÂ and summer of 2012 was a decorating frenzy as we moved into the new CMS.
Here’s the view of the circulation desk walking in before we started anything:
I wanted to do something fun with the HUGE circulation desk staring you in the face when you walk into the library.
Valspar makes this cool Tintable Chalkboard Paint that you can get in tons of colors! The guy at the hardware store recommended that we print with a bonding primer.
After two coats of the primer, we were ready for color!
The blue is one of our school colors and the green matches some of the furniture and gives a fun pop of color. Again, the paint took two good coats plus more touch up. We let it sit for several days so it would be fully cured. Then we primed the surface by coloring the entire surface. This was messy and made the surface not look perfect and clean like it does above, but otherwise when you start drawing on the surface, you’ll have ghost shadows of old designs. I read this blog post on Ella Claire Inspired by Vintage Charm to better understand this chalkboard paint situation.
After it was all cured and primed, my mom and I got to play around with the chalk!
Another fun project was the library word cloud. I love using vinyl to create word clouds and wall quotes, but the area where I wanted to hang this was a little high. Instead of applying the vinyl directly to the wall, we bought a canvas and applied the vinyl to it. I was really happy with the result!
You can see it below hanging in it’s proper place.
I’m feeling good about the changes we’re making in the new library. As always, it will be a work in progress for quite some time. I’m very excited about the upcoming school year!
Wow, thank you for this very helpful tutorial. I just spent a while making word cloud art for my kids and a friend! It s so much fun.
I just happened upon your blog and LOVE your circulation desk! Whenever I come across an inspiring message or quote, I tuck it away in a word document and it rarely sees the light of day again because I can’t quite wrap my mind around how to display them regularly without a ton of work on my part. I never thought to used chalkboard paint in my library and now it is going to be my next big project!
My poor principal… 🙂