painted spoons

I love the dipped paint look I've been seeing all over Pinterest, from furniture legs to wooden utensils. Inspired by a tutorial from House of Earnest, I got an inexpensive bamboo utensil set from Target (under $5) and got out my stash of craft paints...

This was such an easy and inexpensive project for such great results - they'll be fun serving spoons for summer! (The shellac is non-toxic, but I still made sure not to put paint/shellac close to the end of the spoon that will touch food, and they'll be hand-wash only.) Here's the basic process:

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holiday festivity napkins

Here's a festive holiday project that's also great for New Year's: embellished napkins, as seen on Momtastic. With metallic paints (the Martha Stewart line at Michael's has lots of great options) and a circular sponge brush, you can whip up a few of these for your holiday table in no time. To make it even quicker, I picked up some inexpensive white napkins at Target so I didn't have to sew my own.

Supplies:

• Napkins (or fabric to sew your own)
• Acrylic paints or fabric paints in metallics
• Fabric medium (if using acrylic paints)
• Round foam brush (pouncer)
• Paper plate to pour paint on

Since I used regular acrylic paints, I mixed them with a fabric medium (according to the instructions on the bottle) to make sure the napkins would be machine washable. Then I just laid out the napkins on some newspaper, dipped the foam brush, and made random dots all over. I didn't worry too much about perfect coverage for each dot, but kind of twisting the brush around a little once pressed down helped get fairly even coverage. After they were dry, I ironed to set the fabric medium.

I gave these ones as gifts - they might also be great as hostess gifts - but if I were hosting anything at New Year's, I'd definitely use these for a festive table setting!