All kids love drawing and being creative so parents always end up having to buy a blackboard for their bedrooms. These days, that mainly means a plastic easel with a blackboard on one side and a whiteboard on the other. That's what Sophie used to have in her old bedroom, but the tray underneath for all the chalk/whiteboard pens ends up getting totally covered in chalk dust, the kids fingers then gets covered in chalk dust and the bedroom ends up with little white fingerprints on whatever they've touched. Forensics experts would probably have a field day but as a busy mum, it's a right royal pain in the bum ! And that's without mentioning the number of times the whole thing gets knocked over, depositing annoying little bits of chalk (that the vacuum cleaner refuses to pick up) all over the floor and possibly hurting little toes and fingers on the way.
In the newly converted loft, there's less space than in Sophie's old room (but she has got her own bathroom and a storage room, as she's quick to point out !), so after our resounding success with the ballerina wall sticker, we decided to go for a blackboard wall sticker, "specially designed to be written on with chalk". You put it up in exactly the same way as a normal wall sticker - which you'll know all about if you've read my previous blogpost about the ballerina sticker (and if you haven't, just click on the link above !). For the ballerina, as it was our first attempt, we were a bit worried about air bubbles. This time, we were a bit worried about scraping off the special blackboard covering when putting it up. But in both cases, it all went according to plan with absolutely no hiccups - and the result was even more impressive than we had expected !
I wasn't really expecting the blackboard sticker to work as well as a "real" blackboard, but it does. Whether using white or coloured chalk, it stands out really well and the sticker looks very hardwearing. Sophie moaned a bit because there's a bit of white chalky residue left on the sticker after you've rubbed out your picture - but she had exactly the same problem with her old blackboard easel downstairs. And I'm a teacher and I have exactly the same problem in my classroom too ! As a quickfix, I'd given her a tissue to wipe it clean (because obviously, she wanted to draw on it straight away because "it's really coooooool Mum !") so we'll have a play about with rags and sponges and see what works best.
As I mentioned in my previous blogpost, there is a huge range of wall stickers available at Easystic, and this is also true for the blackboard stickers. You have a choice of several designs - a splat, an elephant, a butterfly, a very chic Parisian Morris column (the "très élégant" old-fashioned advertising kiosk things they have in Paris streets) or, the one we chose, the easel. Before stumbling across the blackboard stickers at Easystic, I had planned on using special blackboard paint that I'd seen on D&co, the French version of Changing Rooms. But with a sticker, it's quicker, cleaner and certainly more artistic than anything I would have ever managed to create with a pot of paint !
4-year-old Juliette loves it - for once, she doesn't get in trouble for drawing on the wall ! - and 8-year-old Sophie thinks "it's much more grown-up than the easel ones, they're for babies" ! And I love the fact that it takes up less space and I'm not forever tangling up the vacuum cleaner in the easel legs !
Mission accomplished for doing up the new bedroom - and she likes it, phew !
star rating : 5/5
RRP : €68
for more info : http://www.easystic.com/
(The site is in French but they do deliver in other countries and they may well be translating their site into English in the near future )
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