Garden Stakage

I decided that my spoon stakes I started year before last were a little too hard to see when stuck into the brown earth.  Their rustic patina with black lettering just wasn't going to cut it.  New garden boxes, new stakes, I said.  So I went off in search of the latest craze in gardening stakes, on the internet, of course, and decided that chalkboard stakes were the thing to do.

I also thought they would make a great housewarming gift for new home owners, Kristen and Eric, since they had just started planting a few things.

After looking up prices I realized there was no way I was going to buy them when I could make about 6 dozen for the price of one.  Plus, I'd always wanted to purchase chalk paint and test her out.  Here was my chance!

First thing I needed was some wood.  After searching all over Home Depot, I found some 4 x 1.5 x .5 in beauties over near the stakes area sitting in an aisle hanging bin.  I think these were the bad eggs in some of their larger bundles that had way more than I needed and were more than I wanted to spend.  There were many that looked awful, so I picked out the best ones with no holes or splits.  I managed to find eight good ones.  The awesome news was that they were only $0.55 each!  Yahoo!

Next up was to convince Chris to cut them as I had tried before to get a nice perfect point, but totally sucked at it.  Of course Chris figured out a no brainer way of doing them by lining up a piece of tape and I probably could have taken over, but really, why would I?

Cutter man Chris is very serious.

Perfect point!

All my stakes in a row.

After he was done with 48 of these babies, I got to bust out my new chalkboard paint.  I decided to get one that I could add my own color to so I could have more fun with it and be able to change up colors in the future on different projects.  I used one of my free Valspar samples to add a pretty pink color to the chalkboard paint.

After two LONG coats and one week of required waiting per the directions they were ready to be chalk primed.  To do this you take a piece of chalk and rub it on the entire piece.  Very messy, and a little icky feeling.  You know what I'm talking about.

Then simply wipe it off with water and you have a blank canvas.

I purchased some chalk markers online in a four pack so I could use extras as gifts.  I thought the markers would look cleaner and feel a little better when writing.  Here are the two chalks I used for this project.

And the finished product!

And here they all are, brightening up my garden.

So fun!

Here is my bounty of lettuce from yesterday.  I swear it regrows in a day right now.  Loving it!