Have you ever said to yourself, “Hey, I’m pretty good at this creative thing!” And then that ego gets a dose of reality when you see this:

Umm, yeah. We all have strengths and weaknesses. 🙂 Look how beautiful Alyssa’s handwriting is:

I am not a quitter though.

I found a free printable pin which lead me to The Cottage Market.com. I simply picked which design I wanted and printed it up on my super dusty printer.

In my stash of supplies that I will use “someday”, I had this black graphite paper. I bought it at Hobby Lobby.

If you have never worked with graphite paper before it similar to tissue paper that allows you to trace patterns onto objects. It is very similar to carbon paper for those of us who are…mature enough to know what that is  😉 There is a darker side and a lighter side. All you have to do is place the dark side onto the piece you’re working with. Then place your pattern, face up on top of the graphite paper (the lighter side should be facing you).

As the directions on the graphite package say, you can use low tack masking tape to prevent movement of the paper and pattern. Trace your pattern with a stylus, pencil or pen. I used a mechanical pencil. Be careful not to press too hard or you could tear the paper.

My chalkboard paint and graphite paper were both black but it worked out fine, a little hard on the eyes, but fine.

From here I simply traced the transferred pattern with a white paint marker and filled in the lines. Since I painted this piece with actual chalkboard paint, I could have traced my pattern with chalk, but I wanted a more permanent drawing so I used the paint marker.

Some people can write beautifully, some people can trace beautifully. 🙂

~Wendy