Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Advice On Painting Your Shelves With Chalkboard Paint

As many of you may or may not know, I painted my shelves in chalkboard paint.  It is probably my favorite thing about my shelves.  So I thought I would give advice for anyone who wanted to do this as well.  So I'll break this up into some helpful sections (or at least I hope it is helpful).

What you'll need
Well the first thing you'll need is chalkboard paint.  I bought the Disney brand of chalkboard paint (which you can't get anymore).  I found it at my local Walmart.  I have two bits of advice.  My shelves are about six feet high and three feet wide.  It only took on 32 fluid ounce paint can to paint two coats on my shelves, and I have two shelves to give you a bit of guidance of how much paint to buy.  The second is if you don't want the black color of a chalkboard get untinted chalkboard paint.  My shelves are originally white, and since I had untinted paint, they stayed white.  Now this happened purely by accident for me, but it was a happy accident.

The next thing you'll need are paint brushes and a paint tray, and while I'm sure you figured this out all on your own I do have some advice.  Now any old paint tray will do, but your brushes are important.  I would highly recommend a roller especially if you are doing the outside of your shelves.  However you will need a brush, if you paint the inside to get the corners, which was something I had overlooked.

The last thing you'll need is chalk or chalkboard markers.  Now I prefer chalkboard markers, but they are definitely more expensive.  However if you want it to look like paint then I would highly recommend the markers.  You can get them on Amazon for a relatively nice price.  However I've been buying them at Michaels because I've had an emergency need for chalkboard markers.  Now this is the brand I get.  While they are expensive, Michaels almost always has coupons so they aren't as expensive.  With the chalkboard paint that I used it needed to cure for a week, so I would recommend ordering them from Amazon.  I bought this brand from Amazon, but I don't know how well they work since I haven't used them yet.
These are all of the colors I had a few weeks ago.  I have bought some browns and tans since then, but they come in a variety of colors.










So this is what chalkboard markers look like if this is the look you want.
























Some Advice
If you are drawing something big I would recommend doing it in pencil first.  I drew the Hogwarts castle, and I had to redo the whole thing.  Now that was also kind of my fault because I didn't see how high I wanted it, but I would still recommend drawing in pencil first because a lot of the colors don't come off very nicely.  I would also recommend paint that matches your shelves.  Thank goodness my shelves are white because I could get rid of some of my mistakes to make it look nice again especially with my castle.  Also have wet paper towels at all times for erasing.  I would also recommend a dry one so you can dry the surface when you're done.

If you want to know more about what I plan on doing with my shelves or why I wanted to paint them in chalkboard paint in the first place you can go watch this video.  If you want to do this please let me know, and if you have any questions feel free to ask!

Friday, June 3, 2016

Let's Talk About Mental Illness

My story
I am not one to hide what is wrong with me.  Most of my friends know this, but I have struggled a lot with mental illness for the last nine years or so.  I personally struggle with anxiety and panic disorder as well as depression.  My anxiety has been bad for the last couple of years, but my depression, while there were good days and bad days, has been mostly under control  until recently.  However as some of you may know, my life has kind of unraveled over the last couple of months.  I don't really have friends right now where I live, and the ones I do don't get that I just can't magically get better, but that will be a tangent in a minute.
The worst part about depression and anxiety for me is the fact that I just don't enjoy anything right now.  I don't want to film, read, or play video games.  I still try to film topics that I'm excited about, but when I do, they just aren't as well received.  Don't get me wrong, I don't do this for views or subscribers, but when you're really excited about something and you feel like no one is watching it gets kind of disappointing especially when life already kind of sucks.   However if I don't film, I then feel stressed out.  I know if I said anything everyone would be like "it's fine don't worry take care of yourself", but I always feel so incredibly guilty when I don't put a video up every week.  I know that's a silly thing to stress about, but for some reason it makes me so anxious if I don't film.  Then I'm in the violent circle of I need to film and I'm freaking out that I haven't filmed, but I don't want to film, or if I do I don't have anything I want to talk about.

I guess the point is it's okay to be not okay.  A lot of the people who are my "friends" (i.e. people in my classes or who I work with but don't see outside of class/work) don't get that.  They tell me I need to try to get better right away and make myself happy.  Now don't get me wrong that is important and you definitely need to take care of yourself, but it's okay to be not okay. It's okay to fall apart.  It's okay not to film, or blog, or read because you just can't bring yourself to do it.  It's okay to not want to get out of bed, but at some point we all need to pick ourselves up.  Even if that just means going through your daily routine, which for me, getting up and going to the grocery store or getting the mail can be the hardest thing in the world to do right now.   Some days, you need to focus on the little victories.  So to you reading this, never forget that some days the little victories are what matters.  You are not your illness, and eventually everything gets better even if it doesn't seem that way right now.
To anyone who doesn't feel important, I promise you are.  There is someone in this world who is so proud of you and cares about you so much.  If nothing else, I (a stranger on the internet) am so proud of you.  Whether you are struggling through a terrible depression right now or if it was years ago, I am proud of you because mental illness isn't easy, and some days life might not feel worth it, but I just want everyone to know that you are important and you are worth it.

Now this originally was supposed to talk about mental illness and being a content creator, which is something i've been struggling with a lot.  I don't feel inspired to create content.  I, right now, barely feel inspired to get out of bed.  However I think this ended up making a more important point that you aren't alone in this struggle, and there is someone out there who cares about you. I promise.