Watercolour Christmas – painted napkins DIY

To fit the painted tablecloth done earlier this week, it was just fitting to show you a few a painted napkins DIY that will fit the theme beautifully and complete your table linen for Christmas.

You will need:

Fabric paint – blue, turquoise and yellow

Eight fabric squares cut to 40 x 40 cm and edges off with and over-locker

Applicator sponge

Container and water

Medium size paint brush

Step 1:

Wet a strip of the fabric with your applicator sponge. This will help the paint to spread so that it creates a watercolour effect.

Step 2

Now add paint to the wet strip. We started at the bottom of the napkin with blue, followed by turquoise above and ended it off with yellow.

Step 3

To break the monotony of the solid stripes I painted crisscross stripes with a dry brush to extend the yellow at the top of the napkin.

Step 4

I hung the napkins on our washing line and it was a huge mistake! Note to self: never do that again as the wet paint came off on the line and I had to wash it all down. Rather peg them to a piece of string suspended 2 chairs.

Left overs

For a bit of variation, I decided to have two of them a bit more subtle than the painted napkins. I pressed the fabric down on the newspaper that I used underneath while painting the other napkins, and it made a beautiful print onto the fabric. It’s a bit of a frottage effect and I love it!

All done

These napkins add the perfect colour splash to our watercolour Christmas table. They are fun and versatile and placed on top of the plates, they create a gorgeous display of colour.

I hope you try your hand at these! They are lots of fun to make and you can experiment with different designs and colours to your heart’s content!

Now, you may have noticed my amazing copper-dipped cutlery. It’s a short and sweet 1 minute wonder!

I bought this plastic cutlery set on sale and wanted to use it on our watercolour Christmas table. The only problem: because they are transparent, they would get totally lost when placed on my very colourful napkins! So I decided to dip the beautifully detailed handles in copper craft paint.

And the effect was very interesting!

Here’s what you’ll need for this super easy painted cutlery DIY:

Plastic cutlery

Copper craft paint (or any metallic craft paint of your choice)

Paper towel

One step wonder

I love doing one step DIY’s. Life is too short! Simply dip your handle in the copper paint and wipe the excess with the paper towel. It gives it a lovely distressed feel and the right amount of colour without taking away the transparency.

Expect the unexpected

So the most interesting thing is that the craft paint made these stunning watery patterns on the sections that I wiped almost clean of the paint. It sticks beautifully to the plastic but I won’t bargain on it surviving the first wash. You can always dip it in another colour for your next soiree.