Revamped Napkins

After the fun we had making our place mats, the Girls Team decided to stay in theme and create our own napkin designs this week. My mom had about 20 white cotton napkins lying around, so we planned to revamp them by painting them using stencil designs. After a trip to Michaels, we came home with all-surface paint, stencil templates and stencil brushes. My mom loves pine cones and found the perfect sized pine cone stencil. I had hoped for a fleur-de-lis stencil, but had no luck, so I decided to create my own chevron stripe stencil out of poster board once we were back home.

After covering the kitchen table with a plastic table cloth from the dollar store, we were ready to paint! I tried to use the stencil brushes for my chevron pattern, but I think my oversized stencil required too much paint so the stencil brush wasn't really doing anything except for stretching out my fabric. Hmm. I hadn't planned on this NOT working! Luckily, my mom saved the day with a foam sponge brush. (In case you can't tell from past projects, this is quickly becoming my favorite craft supply. We've used it for so many projects!) As I sponged my napkins, I was quickly becoming impatient. I was flying through my paint, and had only purchased one bottle because I knew that when using a stencil brush, minimal paint was necessary. I was going to have to figure out a new game plan to salvage my napkin night! 

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the table, my mom was cruising along with her stenciling like she had done this before. Oh wait, she has! Let's have our pro demonstrate how it's done:

Because she had finished her four napkins in the time it took me to paint two of mine (and probably to avoid my grumbling), my mom went to the laundry room to rummage through our random craft supplies. Suddenly, she was back with a fleur-de-lis stencil that we didn't even know we had! My night was saved :) After finishing two napkins in the chevron pattern, and going through 3/4 of my paint, I was happy to create two, simple fleur-de-lis napkins.

In about 30 minutes, my mom created four pine cone napkins, and in about 1 and 1/2 hours, I created two chevron striped napkins and two fleur-de-lis napkins. Here are our final products drying:

Once the napkins had dried overnight, the Girls Team was very happy with how the stenciled designs turned out. According to Martha Stewart her paint is washing machine safe, but we still need to test that part out. My chevron napkins weren't quite what I was expecting. I ended up using so much paint on them that they dried very stiff. I imagine that if you tried to use them as a napkin, they'd work much like an exfoliator, blurg.

But! The Girls Team's creative minds are running trying to find something else to use them for so they don't go to waste. Maybe we will sew them together to make a bag? Or use them as environmentally friendly wrapping paper? What would you use them for dear readers? If you have any ideas, post them in the comments below!

Adding the stencil designs to the napkins was a great way to spruce up some plain napkins we had sitting around the house. Because we were recycling the napkins we already owned, this project was very budget friendly. All we purchased was the paint, brushes and stencil templates for about $15 total. Now that we have the supplies, the Girls Team wants to stencil some stationary in the near future to personalize our note cards!