Geek Office: DIY 8-Bit Heart Magnetic Chalkboard

Another DIY geek gift idea (or just for your own geek office!). This 8-bit heart is a chalkboard AND is magnetic.

We really liked the way that the 8-bit hearts came out on our DIY wood headboard, and knew we wanted to make more in a larger scale. Well, here it is, 18″ tall! Using wood, a jigsaw, and some specialty paints, we made this as a gift for a friends office.

Draw a grid on your piece of wood (however large you would like your heart to be). Then draw your 8-bit shape on the grid, and use a jigsaw to cut it out.

(*A note on jigsaws, if you’ve never used one: I recently saw some comments on a big home blog implying that jigsaws are expensive, or difficult. Not true! Ours was $30 at Home Depot and is really, really easy to use. Of course use proper safety precautions, as you would with anything sharp, but if you can carve a turkey you can use a jigsaw). End rant.

Anyway. How did we not know about magnetic primer?! It makes anything magnetic.

The directions suggested 3 coats of the magnetic primer. We used the entire can, which was about 7 coats, to get good magnetization.

After that was totally dry, we put on two coats of basic red paint. You can use spray paint or regular acrylic paint – we just went with what we had on hand.

Let the red paint dry fully. Best to wait a day for it to DRY dry. I say that, but patience is not exactly our strong point, so we only waited a couple of hours.

Now start painting the black areas, by masking off the area with painters tape. Make sure the tape is really stuck down, to avoid paint seeping underneath. Do the same with the white accent square.

The last step (photo missing – it was getting sleepy and dark in our house) is to cover the entire thing in CLEAR CHALKBOARD PAINT. That’s in capital because of it’s awesomeness. This stuff. It is clear, and stays clear, but mystically turns anything it touches into a chalkboard.

Once everything else was done, we put a couple of these hanging hook guys on the back, for wall mounting:

And that’s it! Here it is with a LEGO minifigure on it, for scale.

Bringing some geek decor into your office: