If you have young children, you know how tricky any artistic or crafty moment can be. It seems like the paint never stays on the paper and the glitter never stays on the table! Now there’s a quick and easy way to give your kids an area where they can draw to their hearts’ delight: chalkboard paint.

Chalkboard paint is really cool because it’s actually a chalkboard that you can paint anywhere. Instead of dealing with oven items to shoot your children’s sculpture, you can simply admire their many doodles on a rapidly changing surface. No longer will your child have to wait for you to do their work in order to see the finished product. With a whiteboard, children can draw, erase and repeat for as long as they choose. Another plus is that chalk wipes up easily, making it a less messy craft.

The beauty of chalkboard paint is that you can paint it on any surface you have available. If you have a few square feet available in your kitchen where the kids always seem to hang out, that’s one option. If you have a craft table for the kids that could use a facelift, a simple coat of chalkboard paint will do the trick. Instead of a table used to make Mexican clay pottery, children can now draw directly on the table. You can even buy that really cool chalk that you can see in 3-D with the special glasses.

You can also paint a chalkboard over an existing corkboard. If you find that you’re not using your cork board for its intended purpose, chalkboard paint will sit nicely on top of it. One thing to keep in mind is that if you decide to randomly paint any wall in your house with the chalkboard paint, be aware that you need to pierce it into their little brains which you can only color on the black part of the wall! The downside of chalkboard paint is that kids may think they can color on any wall, anywhere! As long as you do your best to tell the two surfaces apart, you’ll probably be fine. If your child is struggling and keeps drawing on the parts of the wall they shouldn’t, maybe they should go back to working with a kiln brick instead!