back to the drawing board

Back in the fall I decided I wanted to have some sort of surface on the wall on which I could list things, draw and maybe even start up a mood board. I found some dry erase board contact paper at the hardware store and figured I'd give it a shot. And while it worked for a while it wasn't ideal. It photographs better than it looked in person, because the seam down the middle is hard to capture on film. Also, either from the texture of the wall behind it or possibly just the nature of the contact paper, it was very hard to erase it cleanly. I had to use kitchen sponge to scrub it all away which kind of defeated the purpose. So I began thinking of other alternatives.
Much as I like chalkboards I wasn't ready to paint a bunch of black paint directly onto the wall, and in a perfect world it would be something easily removable, as this is an apartment. Amazingly while I was working on something else yesterday I thought of the perfect solution (I'm a very productive procrastinator).

I took a big roll of brown paper I already had on hand (purchased for a project which changed and required a different material) and ran a heavy cord through it and hung it from a molding picture hook. I weighted the bottom down with binder clips holding nickles to keep it from curling up (random but it works) and best of all, I can use a white china marker on the paper for a similar visual effect to chalk but it doesn't get dust all over everything (helpful since my dress form lives next to it). Overall this seems like an excellent solution for now. I figure when I fill up a sheet I can cut it off and roll out more. Might even be fun to document each length as it gets decorated....