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Hacking Sidewalk Chalk

Sidewalk chalk. The awesomeness of temporary art.

MF loves the stuff... He does his best at drawing fish, sharks, circles and monkeys (they all look the same) and has us supplement his Jackson Pollock-esque doodles with fish and other things... But mostly fish.

And it's up for a day or two then gone after a rain... As it should be.

But it could be a little disappointing because it's so faint... And so temporary... What if you could hack it and make it better?

That's just what we did.

It was an accident. We left the washable sidewalk chalk out during a storm and the box got filled with water... It stayed like that for a few days before we noticed...

Then came a nice day and The Kid wanted to play chalk... So play we did (although we really didn't play chalk we used chalk or drew with chalk or such) after I drained the chalk box.

The water gave the chalk an awesome consistency... And the color was amazing. The chalk rods (is that what you call them) were super soft and they almost melted into the concrete... I wish I took pics of them because the color was so vibrant and bright. I will and I'll update the post.

Anyway I drew fish like normal... One was an anglerfish because, well they're awesome... And I make little fish going into their mouths... And dude knows them as anglerfish which is one reason he's awesome. The other a normal fish...

And time passed and it rained... And the fish stayed, and it rained again and they stayed and a torrential rain and they're there...

The fish are faint but they've persisted... Faint but there... It's been about a month.

Happy blue fish
Sad super faint anglerfish
I tried to see if the chalk would come out with some scrubbing and it does...

The temporary chalk was hacked... The kids on our street love that there is still a shark on the sidewalk (it's obviously a happy fish and an anglerfish but whatever) and I created a new toy...

An awesome semi-temporary super saturated, super soft, super colorful sidewalk chalk...

I'm gonna figure out how long the chalk needs to soak and I'll do a tutorial soon.

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