Frugal Friday Recipe: Making sidewalk chalk out of egg shells

This post is a part of a mini series in Frugal Friday recipes about not letting anything go to waste (an important part of being frugal.) We love eggs in our house and we used to just throw our egg shells in the compost bin. They serve a very useful purpose in that bin but I have discovered another use for eggs shells that I like even more…making sidewalk chalk!

Ingredients: Egg shells, Water, flour and food coloring (if you want your chalk colored not white).

Directions:

1. As you are preparing your egg dish set your egg shells aside. Rinse the eggs under cool water to remove all the egg (this includes the “film” that coats the shell. Cold water works best for removing this! Set in a bowl and allow to dry. I like to spread my shells out on a cookie sheet and place in the oven at 265 for about 15 minutes to make sure they are completely dry. Dry egg shells are the key to making this work so make sure they are totally dry before moving on to step 2!

Egg shells ready for use!

1. Place egg shells in a bowl or on cement outside (cement must be dry). Grind the egg shells using a rock (or spice container!) until a fine powder forms. This may cause the varnish on your bowls to be chipped away so be careful. Rocks and cement work best for this or you can use a blender (that is dry) this is the fastest method.  When your done it should look like flour. Be sure and pick out any big pieces

Grinding the shells

Try and get your powder this fine...a rock works great but takes time...a blender is the quick method!

1. Place in a bowl 1TBS egg shell powder, 1tsp VERY HOT water and 1tsp flour. Mix until a thick paste forms
2. Add food coloring if you desire color
3. Take the paste and shape into chalk. 6 eggs will make 2 pieces of chalk the size I have pictured. We like to wait until we have more (12 egg shells) and fill up a toilet paper tube. Then we just peel back the tube to expose the amount of chalk we want to write with.

1. Roll up the chalk tightly in a paper towel (or cover the ends of the toilet paper tube with a paper towel). Allow to sit for 3 days in a dry spot until set.

*Note this is for outdoor chalk, the egg shells are a bit courser then commercial chalk and may scratch your chalkboards. Works great on cement though and washes out easily!*

We have lots of fun with this and decorate the toilet paper tubes so they are fun to draw with or make fun shapes (like hearts for Valentines Day!)