City Mitten

Well, well, well… what have we here? Somebody has a chalkboard heart.

Yes. Indeed. In my room. Now.

My bedroom is huge for a New York City apartment. Last year I was living in an 8×10 craphole in the East Village and now that I’m living in Brooklyn, I’ve got a thing called SPACE! It was a strange concept at first.

I have this huge wall that has just been staring at me since I moved in. I’ve been slowly putting my room together piece by piece since I didn’t own much (or anything) before. And last night I finally got around to that blank wall.

I got the idea to make a chalkboard after seeing my friend Laura’s loft apartment in Bushwick with an entire wall of chalkboard. But I decided I didn’t want an entire black wall, I wanted a chalkboard in the shape of something: a heart. I like hearts. Not girly pink ones (usually) but I do like them. I have a little heart tattooed on one of my ribs. So heart it is.

Missy came over and helped me. First up was cutting up a bunch of paper shopping bags I was holding on to for some reason (this one, obviously) to make a tarp for the floor since I didn’t even think about getting one. The next part was the hardest: drawing.

Go up to a wall and draw a giant heart free-hand and take a step back and see what you’ve got. It probably ain’t pretty. It probably looks like a million things it shouldn’t. Missy and I had lots of laughs over this process. But the drawing was really the hardest part. This is when it was kind of crooked and we couldn’t figure out why:

We kept trying to make this side wider and that side more curved and this side inside out until I finally realized I had a tape measure so we made some measurements and some improvements and it finally looked like a pretty damn good heart. A damn good one. The painting part took an actual five minutes, but the preparation into it was pretty intense. Haha.

I want to say thank you to my good friend P for letting me borrow his painting supplies which I am not going to return. This chalkboard paint is not gonna come out (or it is, but I don’t really want to try… I’ll buy you a new paint tray, P). Here’s me showing off my skillz:

Here’s Missy showing off her skillz:

And here’s us with the final product after it dried:

It’s kind of daunting to have this giant black heart in front of my face as I’m typing this, but it’s gonna be way less daunting once someone draws a pretty picture on it. Who wants to come over and draw or write something? I’m supposed to wait three days before I draw on it, but I already have the chalk!

Oh and my animals really like it too:

That’s Owly, Rawly, and Somebody I Have Not Yet Named because when I got him his name was “Ghasty” and it’s just not sticking. And yes, I am 25 in about five seconds and I have stuffed animal friends. I’m awesome.

I can’t wait to draw on my heart!