How to make a personalize place mat. Use our custom made decorative lettering stencil to design a personalized canvas place mat.

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How to make a personalized placemat Use our custom designed reusable decorative lettering stencils to design a personalized canvas placemat. Personalized placemats are fun and easy to make. You can use a variety of different paints, markers or dyes to decorate your placemat. All of the supplies needed for this craft project can be found at Jo-Ann fabric, Dick Blick or Mr. Art.
The supplies you need to make a personalized canvas placemat are:
2 -3 different colors of acrylic paint	Hot glue gun, fabric glue or fuseable bonding web
Stencil brush for every color paint you use	Clear acrylic protective sealer
Canvas drop cloth or pre-primed artist canvas	Staple gun
Painter's tape or masking tap	Pencil
Plastic container to clean brush	A personalized lettering stencil
Gesso artist primer	Krylon easy tack adhesive for stencils
Natural sponge	Ruler and straight edge
Paper plates
Steps
1. Spread your drop cloth out and cut off any seams because these are not useable. Cut the drop cloth to various sizes. If your using pre-primed canvas you can start at step 11. 2. Take your straight edge and a pencil to square your drop cloth along the edges. 3. Staple your drop cloth to a board or heavy piece of cardboard and pull the fabric taut. Spray water on your stretched drop cloth to remove any wrinkles. You can also use an iron to remove wrinkles. 4. While your drop cloth is stapled apply 2 coats of gesso or exterior paint to the front of the floorcloth only. You'll prime the back later. 5. When your drop cloth is dry take your straightedge and a pencil and square up the edges. Drop cloths will shrink and warp around the edges to some degree when you apply the paint so cut off the areas that may have warped. 6. For a finished placemat that is 13" x 17" (like the one shown in our example) cut a section of primed drop cloth 15" x 19". This allows for a 1" hem. It's a good idea to save the scrap sections of primed drop cloth so that you can practice stenciling before you work on your main project. 7. Turn your primed 15" x 19" piece of drop cloth over so that the primed side is facing down. Now is the time to make your hem and mitered corners. Take your ruler and place the edge of it an inch from the edge of your place mat. Wrap the edge of the placemat over the ruler to make a crease. Continue creasing your place mat until you've done all four sides.


8.Crease around the edges of your place mat & fold your hem over so that your corners are square. Make a mark with your pencil where the edges of your hem come together.	9. Unfold your hem and using a pencil and a ruler draw a diagonal line across the corner.	10. Cut along your diagonal line to remove your corner. Cut the remaining 3 corners of your place mat off.

11. After you've cut off all four corners it's time to hem your place mat. You can hem with hot glue or fabric glue. For this project I used liqui-fuse fusible web applied with a hot iron.	12. Finish ironing down all four sides and corners of your place mat. Firmly press the corners of your placemat together to get a good fit.	13. Finish off your hem by burnishing down the edges. To burnish, take a painter's stick or ruler and press along the hem as you glue it down.

14. Finish priming by applying 2 coats of gesso. Allow this to dry. Apply one layer of gesso to the front of your place mat. Spray a thin coat of easy tack on your stencil and positive it on your placemat.	15. You don't need much paint to stencil. Start by pouring a half dollar size blot of each paint color on to a plastic lid.	16. Dip your stencil brush in your paint then blot on a paper towel to remove most of the paint. Hold your stencil brush straight up as you stencil. Now pounce (lightly tap) your paint onto your stencil.

17. You can speed up the drying time by using a hand held hair dryer.	18. To make border, measure 1" from edge & place painter's tape. Burnish down edges.	19.Using a sea sponge and 3 colors of paint, sponge paint around border.

20. When finished sponge painting apply two coats of clear acrylic sealer to the front and back of your placemat. Finished placemat size: 13 " x 17" Stencil size: 3" x 10"	21. Enjoy your personalized place mat.!