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Custom Placemats

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Category: Home Decor

Custom placemats are easy and fun to make. Using a mix of common materials and repurposed items -- such as cork, burlap, appliques, vintage postcards and sheet music -- Carter Oosterhouse demonstrates how to make eye-catching table decorations to suit any home. The key to making your placemats extra special is taking the time to personalize them to your tastes.

Step 1: Shop
Dig around antique stores and thrift shops to find old items like sheet music, post cards or even maps that can repurposed into cool placemats.

Step 2: Old Placemats
Take an old placemat and dress it up with some appliques; choose a design that fits your dining decor.

Step 3: Cork
Trace out utensils on some corkboard and cut away the shapes. Apply some glue to one side of the corkboard then adhere to a colored foam sheet.

Step 4: Burlap
Take a sheet of burlap and pull some of the strands loose along the border to give it a frayed look. Then design it with cool appliques.

Step 5: The Laminator
Arrange some old post cards, sheet music or pages from books in the design you want and place between your plastic sleeve. Insert into your cardboard sleeve, and then run through the laminator. Try a few practice runs to get used to working with the machine.

Items You'll Need for this GMC Trade Secret

  • Old Placemats
  • Corkboard
  • Foam Sheets
  • Utility Knife
  • Burlap
  • Appliques
  • Old Post Cards
  • Maps
  • Sheet Music
  • Laminator

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5 Comments

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Barb

If you don;t have a laminator, take them to Office Max or Office Depot .. they'll laminate them for you. Could make nice Christmas presents.. probably faster than going out to buy them.

December 04 2011 at 8:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
susansavitt99

Just more things to do in a busy season, Sue

December 03 2011 at 5:46 PM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
AccScentiques

Great...all I need is a many$$$$ laminator...Everything else is old hat.

December 03 2011 at 4:26 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
josmiles

A few other ideas: For wedding rehearsal dinner,laminate pictures of the bride and groom -- as children, or perhaps pictures taken while dating. After laminating, border with electrical tape in the bride's wedding colors. For a Christmas dinner, use rectangles of laminated Christmas wrap. Same for a sit-down birthday lunch or dinner.. using laminated rectangles of birthday wrap. For a Fall ldinner, collect fallen leaves and arrange for laimnating either on a colored paper background, or directly on the laminate. In the Spring, you can use rose petals in the same way. Finally, when teaching small kids to set a table properly, laminate construction paper with the outlines of a table lsetting on the paper, including plate. glass, napkin and utensils.

December 03 2011 at 2:05 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
waikswithspirits

I would have taken this idea several steps further. When using the laminator, you can place a sheet of color paper inside as long as you leave enough border for the lamintor to secure the edges .. Place photos of the person who will be sitting at that spot. Add some decorative touches as well. ... so much more to be done to make it really cool than what he's demonstrating. You can purchase artistic type items at pngtube.com if you really want some decorative touches.

December 03 2011 at 1:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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