Already submitted - update

On Monday, I finally finished  painting the board with the final touches some of them needed.

I put all of them in bags, which looks so nice I will probably sell them in them.

I have begun designing some kind of packaging solution, which I hope to perfect by the time they go on sale.

The boards are ready

I worked until 21:00 last night but finally they are ready.

It was not easy to get there.
In the last couple of days I struggled to get all prepared in time for tuesday when they are assessed.

I have misjudged the time required for final touches and fixes. as a result the boards look much better from a distance than from up close.

I think the lesson here is that if I had to do this again, I will not paint the borders. The idea is nice, but I think that with the tools at my disposal they bring the overall look of the products down towards hand madness. The other thing I will do is carve the letters deeper as  there were a lot of roller accidents, where the black paint got into the letters.

Not magnetic.

Yesterday, I purchased a magnetic surface primer.

It was disastrous from the beginning. First, I opened it too close to some of the boards I removed the masking film from. It splattered over them and kind of ruined 3 of them. Which means more spray paint work.

 

I continued by experimenting with the primer on MDF with layers of blackboard over it.

Sadly, the oily nature of it seems to mess with the effectiveness of the blackboard paint. As a result, chalk used on the board does not come off very well. It also seems to prevent the blackboard paint from staying on the surface, it comes off when I wiped the chalk.

The magnet primer has a very weak pull on the magnet I tested. 

It was a valuable thing to experiment with , and I'm glad I tested the amazing possibility of a magnetic blackboard. But I believe that it reduces the effectiveness of the blackboard in favour if a minimal magnetic feature. So I am now, more than ever, convinced I should stickto 'plain' blackboards.

Good investment

Yesterday, while out for pre afternoon tea shop, I decided to enter a nearby hardware shop.

I was hoping to find the kind of paint roller brush I use for the blackboard paint. On a hunch I asked about paint masking sheets, and was suggested a carpet protector adhesive sheet.

I got it and tested it today. It made it possible to mask all of the boards in less than two hours. What I expected to accomplish in a day was done so quickly that I was able to start spray painting the entire stock of boards.

By the end of the day, all of the boards have been sprayed at least once with several already sprayed in colour.

Romi photobombing my studio shot

Tomorrow and Wednesday are heavily scheduled with assessment and other coursework related meetings. I hope to complete spraying the boards so the later part of the week can be dedicated to blackboard painting and portfolio preparation.

Personal note boards in the last two days

After experimenting with the prototype boards, I am yet not able to produce perfect edges for the boards. However, the results I have achieved will have to suffice predominantly because I feel I have to push forward. The group meeting we were sopposed to have this morning was postponed and moved to Tuesday. My hope was that after the meeting I might have a solution.  Because I have a lot to do by that point, if I am lucky, I will have the boards sprayed but not painted by then. In this way, perhaps I will find a definitive solution to the borders problem either before or during this meeting.

Yesterday, after working with the prototypes, I coated all the boards with an MDF sealer.

Today, I began by masking and spraying (in white) several of the smaller 'use me' boards.

After they dried I made the mistake of removing the masks, forgetting the fact that The white serves only as an initial layer to help the later colour layer to come out.
That meant that I had to re-do those covers later, and this made me decide to start covering all of the boards (except one which I have no table space for) with a masking layer.

at first I cover the text area

 

then cover the entire board with a masking layer and cur it to size, removing the mask from the letters

Then cover the back, but leave the masking tape's fringes as this  makes removing them later easier

So far I have most of the boards masked on the front. I havent completed that entirely but I made my job for monday easier by beginning the process. I made the choice of masking the fronts first because it takes more time then covering the back (which is a relatively quicker job)

The work space as I left it, I plan to get back as early as possible on monday!

More update on my personal note boards project.

After some research I decided to abandon the metallic paint/magnetic notepad option, as it seems that that kind of paint has recently been discontinued and that shops are struggling to get their hands on it.
My focus, at the moment, is on perfecting the coloured borders of the boards.

 the problem

What I think will be the solution, is to mask the edges of the boards after the final layer of blackboard paint is applied and dried, then cover the surface with paper to shield it and spray again in a way that will affect only the borders.

 in this photo the visible border has been painted using the method described

 I have also created a timetable for this project which I hope to follow:

 

The way things are at the moment.

After a week of debating with students and friends about my project I decided that the pop-up shop needs my boards and that they are indeed appropriate and relevant for this brief.

I am making 3 bespoke boards and as many as would fit with more general labels.
I bought all the materials Ithink will be needed and now all that remains is finalising the cut file (above) and having it CNC'd.