Chalking Drywall Tape - or Making Your Own "Magic" Mesh
By Lissa Ballard
One of the things I love about being married to a contractor is the myriad of items found in the work truck! One day, while poking around my husband's truck, I saw a roll of drywall tape. This looks like a big roll of white Magic Mesh! My eyes lit up, my heart started pounding and my mind was reeling with ideas. I had seen Magic Mesh in magazines, in catalogs and on the web, but my LSS only had 4 x 6 sheets of a patterned something they sold for $4.00 a sheet. This looked to be the "reel" deal! Needless to say, my husband lost his drywall tape. (And yes, it IS acid free!)
Drywall tape adheres just like Magic Mesh. It is "pre-glued" on one side. It is also repositionable. It can be colored with pens or chalk depending on the desired look. Coloring with markers will give you a vibrant color tape, the same as you get buying the actual colored Magic Mesh. Chalking the drywall tape will give you the softness of chalk mixed with the rough texture of the mesh for a wonderful, colorful, new embellishment. So let's get started chalking!
Before you begin, make sure you have all your supplies on hand. You'll need:
drywall tape
a page protector with a white piece of paper inserted
chalks
Q-Tips
Q-Tips are excellent to use because the tape is coarse and the chalk applicators tend to be sensitive even to the chalks. The Q-Tips will pull apart some, but they're expendable!
1) Cut the length of tape desired.
2) Place the length of tape on the page protector.
The page protector (with the white paper inside) is used for several reasons. You can easily see the area you have already colored, you protect your work surface from getting inked or chalked, and the "mesh" will lift right up without sticking to anything else.
3) Using the q-tip like a regular applicator, load the chalk onto the tip.
Because the q-tip is cotton, it holds the chalk well so you don't need a high concentration of the chalk. A little dab will do ya!
4) Apply the chalk to the tape just as you would to paper, re-loading as needing.
As you would expect, the q-tip will begin to "breakdown" and pull apart. You can either continue using it, loading the chalk onto a more "beavertail" like surface and use your finger behind the beavertail for more stability when loading or applying the chalk. Or, just throw it away and use a new q-tip! Another money saver is to use both ends of the q-tip (and each tip for several complimentary colors such as red and pink, or blue and purple on opposite sides of the same tip).
5) After chalking your tape, gently pull the tape away from the page protector.
Voila! You have your very own "Magic" mesh! Use as desired! Great for embellishments for toppers, borders, tags, letters (cut the letters out of the mesh and put on the letter shadows) and so much more!
(Reminder: The excess chalk will be left on the protector. Be careful not to wipe something across it you might not want "chalked". You should take a tissue or baby wipe and clean the protector as soon as possible to avoid chalk getting on other things.)
Here are a few tags I created using this technique. Enjoy!
Lissa Ballard Design Team Member Pages of the Heart
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This site was last updated on December 31 1969 17:00:00.
