Chalk it up

I've seen this so many times on Pinterest that I had to try it for myself to see if chalkboard paint is really as easy as they say.  I bought a couple of the little tin serving trays from the dollar store, a bottle of Martha Stewart multi-surface chalkboard paint and some chalk (a little hard to find in February...FYI).  The instructions and pins said to apply at least two coats of the paint.  I applied three, waiting a day between each coat.  Then you are supposed to condition the paint by rubbing the flat side of the chalk over the entire surface.  Well, this actually scratched up the whole surface of my paint so that the tin on the bottom of the tray showed through again.  I ended up applying two more coats of paint for a total of five coats.  This time I was super careful when rubbing the chalk across the surface and it didn't scratch.  Yay!  One small caveat, Martha Stewart Black Chalkboard paint is very black not the traditional chalkboard grey.  But the nice thing is these trays are obviously metal so I added a couple of cute paper flower magnets that I made and Voila...