Chalkboard Globe

So once upon a time, I saw a picture of a craft and I decided to make it. There is this awesome thing called chalkboard paint, where you just paint something and it can become a chalkboard! How cool is that? So this picture I saw was of a globe that had been entirely painted with chalkboard paint and you could use it as a memo board! I thought that was awesome and I really wanted to do it!

Finding a globe was a bit of a difficulty at first. I went to DI several times, but the ones I could find were about $50! However, I kept persevering and finally I found one! It was a globe on a stand (something that the more expensive ones didn't have) so I could put it on the floor instead of having to find some table space to put it on. It also rotates 360 degrees so you can turn it any which way (which the other ones also didn't have). And the best part is it was only $15! It was a little loose and it wobbled, so I think that's why there was the markdown... But about 1 second with a screwdriver fixed that and it was perfect!

 Here's my lovely find! Globes are pretty cool on their own, and I was excited to revamp this one!

So the globe I found online was painted entirely, but I decided I really wanted to just paint the ocean and give it an extra cool look. Also, I figured if it looked bad I could paint over the land and not worry about it.

 If you want to do a project like this, here are some tips: get several sizes of paintbrushes, and get an especially small one for the detailed work around the borders. Also, with this project, you can't be too much of a perfectionist. The borders are not going to be perfect; don't beat yourself up because you moved the paintbrush too far and covered some of the land. It'll still look great! If you do care about making it all picture perfect, you need to be careful and very focused. One vagrant brushstroke and bam! Iceland's gone. (True story, I got distracted and painted right over Iceland)

 I painted the southern hemisphere first, let it dry, then painted the top half. Then, I added a second coat over the oceans to make sure that it had a good coverage for writing on.

 This is before the second coat and you can definitely see some of the blue still sticking through in some areas.

And here is the finished product! I love how it turned out, and I love the idea of using this as a creative memo board! Daron and I will definitely be using it a lot, it's so much fun!