DIY: Chalkboard Mirror

As you may or may not know, depending on whether or not you are our friends on social media/networking sites, the holiday pictures we had involved a chalkboard that we whipped up ourselves.  The girl came across a couple of mirrors turned chalkboard pins via Pinterest and found this  DIY: chalkboard//mirror.  So we ventured out to make our own and here's how we did it, with a few necessary modifications of our own due to the fact that we have never worked with these materials before.

1. We gathered the materials. The DIY we followed recommended to find a mirror/frame on clearance or to go thrifting, which we highly intended on doing.  However, we couldn't find a frame large enough or ornate enough to our liking.  So we found one at a local Target (pictured under the supplies) and then we headed to our nearest Michael's for everything else.

2. Our mirror was not removable, so I covered and sealed off the mirror with painter's tape and parchment paper. Several coats of gloss cherry red spray paint was used.  Now, I was following the DIY (posted above) but ran into a problem.  It worked for the most part, but two spots on the frame had running spray paint where the paint wouldn't stick, which I'm pretty sure was due to the fact that the frame already had a glossy finish and I was applying glossy spray paint.  Being the anal people we are, this would not fly.  So we needed a primer from Home Depot:

3. After the primer dried,  I redid the cherry red and then waited a day to move on to the chalkboard.  We initially got Martha Stewart's acrylic chalkboard paint and paint rollers.  I applied several coats of the chalkboard paint but we were dissatisfied with the results.  The acrylic paint was really thick (I didn't thin it? Was I supposed to?) and the rollers wouldn't roll.  So the process got messy and difficult.  And as you can see by the picture, the roller leaves deep grooves.  Using the roller & acrylic chalkboard paint creates a bumpy effect when writing with chalk.  Some like this effect, but we didn't so we decided to go with spray chalkboard paint. 

4. I then applied several coats of the spray chalkboard paint to hopefully get rid of all the grooves created by the previous attempt.  Let it dry, and here is the end result:

Enjoy!