4th of July Appreciation!

Many of us, and I'm referring mostly to myself, take our freedom for granted too often. With Independence Day approaching, I came up with this chalkboard plaque to remind myself of the day-to-day things that I can easily take for granted. It's fun for my daughter too. It gives us a chance to highlight something daily or weekly to focus our gratitude on.

First I stared off with a wooden board from Hobby Lobby. It cost $2.99 which is not bad. But I can also picture this with a stressed and weathered piece of wood too, it could give a lot of character.

I primed the board first.

Next using a sponge brush I painted the wood red.

And then used chalkboard paint on the bottom half of the board.

For the flag written message, I initially wanted to use a patriotic scrapbook paper but surprisingly the craft stores did not have a large variety of patriotic paper.

So, I decided to print my own. I found some patriotic clipart that would also leave room for a visible message.

I came up with this “With My Freedom I Will...” message and added a few bulleted highlights.

I printed the clipart and message out on a colored printer.

Then used a couple of coats of mod podge to seal up the paper.

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