Personalized Chalkboards

I can't remember if I mentioned this before or not, but my calling at church is the Additional Relief Society Meeting Coordinator.  What is that?  I am (with the help of a large committee of women) in charge of planning & carrying out monthly activities for the women in my church.  The activities vary throughout the year, always having a spiritual message, sometimes we have dinner, sometimes just snacks or treats, sometimes we learn a new skill, sometimes we make a craft, sometimes we complete a service project.  It's a lot of work (we have anywhere from 50-90 women at each activity), but it's a lot of fun as well.  I have a really great committee of creative & truly inspired women to help & these activities would not get done without them!  

Our activity for May was centered around President Uchtdorf's talk "Forget Me Not."  Such a great & memorable talk!  We invited the Young Women to attend as well (girls ages 12-17) & we served dinner (teriyaki chicken bowls & salad), we had a speaker (who used the "Forget Me Not" talk) & we made a craft (memo boards).  We wanted a cute, useful craft that the women could make that evening that wouldn't break our budget!  So one of the ladies came up with the idea to do memo boards.  We provided the boards & then a variety of supplies so that they could make the boards their own.  We had chalkboard paint, metal sheets that they could glue down on the board to make them magnetic, paint, scrapbook papers, die cutting machine, etc.

Here is the sample I made for our display case to show them one idea for our craft:

It was really simple, but went well with our theme.  I just taped off the edges of the board & painted the inside with chalkboard paint.  Then I used my Big Shot to cut out the letters & the flower.  I glued them down & attached a big yellow button in the center of the flower.  Easy!

We had a few extra boards after our activity, so I brought a couple home.  I made my girls their own personalized chalkboards.  This time I painted the boards first, then I drew a simple template that I traced onto the board & then filled in with chalkboard paint.  And then I used my Big Shot to cut out their names with some cute polka dot scrapbook paper & glued them down.  I did cover the letters this time with some Mod Podge since these boards are going to be used a lot by little hands.

They turned out pretty cute:

And just give them some colored chalk & the girls are entertained for a while!  Awesome!