It's your final chance to nominate your local community space!

Have you nominated your local community space for my #25Project? If you haven’t heard about it, it’s my way of celebrating 25 years of Chalk Paint® and championing local communities. Anyone can enter, from anywhere in the world, but there are only 4 days left until the closing date! This project is so, so close to my heart and I cannot tell you how much pleasure it has given me, to see all the entries that have been pouring in.

It is tremendously exciting to think that 25 spaces - across the whole world (!!) - will be transformed by their communities, with the help of my expert stockists and, of course, buckets of my paint.

Once the deadline has passed, I will spend time in May going through each and every entry, reading the nominations and looking at all the pictures. I must admit, much as I’m looking forward to this, I know there are going to be some really tough choices to make – from those that I’ve peeked at already there’s a hugely diverse range of spaces to be transformed, and an equally varied range of locations! I’m so lucky to have truly expert stockists selling my paint the world over. Once I’ve chosen the winning entries it will be over to them to work with the community on these transformations.

All of my stockists are trained by me and fully understand how to use my paint. It will be they who take the lead on the actual make-overs. They’ll consult with the local community – including the winning nominator, of course – and come up with an inspirational design that will work in the space. My stockists will be there every step of the way, helping out the team of local volunteers to create something fabulous.

We launched the #25Project here in Oxford, where my shop proudly sits on the Cowley Road, and we kicked the whole thing off with the transformation of *my* local community space, The East Oxford Community Centre. The centre is used for a variety of activities such as yoga, toddler sessions, music groups and everything in between.

We (the team at HQ and I) spent a week with a whole host of regulars from the Centre, turning the much-loved space into something which really reflected how fantastic it really is. We got stuck in and had great fun working on all aspects of the job – from sewing curtains to some easy re-upholstering, not to mention a lot of painting! We had a blast. Everyone had a chance, not only to try out my paint for themselves, but also to share ideas and techniques – I think we all learnt something along the way.

So, if you haven’t got your entry in yet, what’s keeping you? Go to our dedicated site, and tell me all about your space and why it’s worthy of an Annie Sloan transformation. www.anniesloan.com/25project