Thrifty Chalkboard party ideas

Welcome my late edition of Thrifty Thursday hosted by Leigh of Tales from Bloggeritaville. This gives us all a chance to have a fun time hunting around the house, the garage, someone elses house and garage or even a thrift store or two to dig up some cool finds.

Be sure and check out the other Thrifty Finds, from the other participants. I'm always amazed at what folks submit and how often I wish I'd found it, or bought it or noticed it...whatever IT is :)

I've got a High School reunion coming up this weekend and we wanted to make some very thrifty items for the event, but still have them be interesting.  I got an idea awhile back from that chalkboard party that was held - some folks did some very interesting things with chalkboard paint.  Also, I received in the mail my gift tags from Olive Rue just before I left town and that gave me yet another layer of ideas.  So what I did was to make a bunch of short term chalkboards, gift tags and clothes pins for my reunion.   By short term I mean that it's pretty much a one or two use thing.  The paint was thin, the paper was posterboard, not wood - so that type of short term.

Here is my lovely chalkboard paint and roller.  My paint was from 3 or 4 years ago - so totally thrifty!  It's been paid for already.

Here is the beginning of the clothespins.  I did all 4 sides and the little kissy mouth ends :)  I didn't do the inside as it was just too difficult.  I took the spring off of one clip just to see if I could get it back together and there was no way! LOL  Lesson learned on that one.  I bought the clothes pins at Michaels.  I think they were $2.50 for a package of 20 or so.

These are the chalkboard tags.  This is only one coat so far - they don't look streaked with two coats.  We are going to attach these to the gift baskets and use for various things.   They are way cool.  These were the hardest item to find - just a plain white tag.  We went to three different stores and finally found them at Hobby Lobby.  A package of 20 for $1.99.  We'll probably use 10 and I made 60 :)  Over-kill, but that's OK.  I'll write notes on them and pass them out at the reunion all night. 

These are the posterboard chalkboard signs.  They will be cut in half to make two signs.  I experimented here because I HAD to!  It was an overwhelming desire to use chalk on a newly painted surface.  My instructions on how to make sidewalk chalk literally glide on a chalkboard surface is here, a part of the chalkboard party post that I did.  The posterboard was $1.99 for a pack of 5.  I will get 10 signs from the 5 pack. 

The pumpkins in the shot above are also from Hobby Lobby.  They were 50% off and my mother picked those three up for $30 total.  They look great on her table and what a deal!  We're having a pumpkin carving party near the end of the month, so these will make nice decorations for the food table.

Thanks so much for joining me on my chalkboard paint extravaganza.  My mom has a cardboard box that printer paper comes in, that she has written over with black ink to mark that the box now holds plastic party supplies.   It's just a mess.  I told her that the leftover chalkboard paint would be great to paint on the ends of the cardboard boxes in storage, so it would be easy to read what's inside and not be distracted by the pictures and other writing...and also easy to change out the tag.  :)  Good idea, huh?  You know I will be painting that box tonight, don't ya?  Yes, I do believe I have to. :)

Thanks everyone!! Hop on over to Leigh's to see the other participants in Thrifty Thursday.
Have a wonderful week!
Kristin