DIY Watercolor Painted Napkins

I’m a sucker for a beautifully set table, and nice napkins are part and parcel of that setup. My girlfriend Caroline and I had a crafting day a while back and experimented with some painted napkins. We wanted to create ones with an abstract, watercolor look to them… and it totally worked! Keep reading for the full DIY watercolor painted napkins – they are crazy easy, you guys.

DIY watercolor painted napkins
October 29, 2015
I’m a sucker for a beautifully set table, and nice napkins are part and parcel of that setup. My girlfriend Caroline and I had a crafting day a while back and experimented with some painted napkins. We wanted to create ones with an abstract, watercolor look to them… and it totally worked! Keep reading for the full DIY watercolor painted napkins – they are crazy easy, you guys.
make these DIY watercolour painted napkins - a great handmade gift idea!
Materials list:
>> Cloth napkins. I used the Gullmaj ones from IKEA that are a cotton/linen blend. They cost $5.99 for a pack of 2.
>> Fabric paint in whatever color(s) you prefer. I use these from the Tulip brand, which work well and are really reasonable at about $10 for a 5-pack of different colors.
>> Small paintbrush.
>> Water, towel, tape.
Step 1 // Wash and prep napkins.
We washed the napkins before getting started to make sure that if they were going to shrink in the wash, it happened before we painted. You can see that they ended up quite wrinkled afterwards, but it was just a matter of ironing them when we were all done to get them smooth and beautiful again.
Lay out the napkins overtop of a surface you don’t mind getting wet and potentially have some paint soak through. We used an old towel, then taped down our napkins on top.





Step 2 // Painting
Now for the actual painting part. Squeeze out a bit of your paint onto a plate or bowl, and have a cup of water at the ready as you’ll be dipping your brush in there constantly. We wanted watercolor stripes along ours, and so started at one end and moved across the napkin dabbing paint on as we went. The trick is to use a lot of water to get that watercolor look. Dab some paint on, then go over it again with a super wet brush. Play around until you get the sort of look you want. You don’t want the consistency of paint to be uniform – some areas with more heavy coloring, some areas that are quite watery and light. This is what makes it more like true watercolor.
Keep working your way across the napkin in stripes from top to bottom. You can also vary the amount of space you have between your stripes, depending on the look you’re going for.





I tried some out with a pretty bright blue and did thicker stripes, and Caroline went for the tried and true black and kept her stripes on the thinner side. You can make these with any color you want, and could even do a multi-color look if you wanted. I was thinking that a half light pink and half minty green would look so sweet.





Go here to see the final important step // http://thesweetestdigs.com/2015/10/29/diy-watercolor-painted-napkins/





Both color options were fun to style. The black and white ones were our fave as we both love scandi-style but warmed it all up with some gold and leather accents. The blue ones were more playful, so we kept the setting light and bright with white on white and more aqua. I feel like they would also be perfect for any garden party or English tea. They have that summery feel to them.











A set of 4 or 6 of these would make an amazing handmade gift idea for around $30. Something to put on the potential holiday gift list? Or do as a house-warming for someone? So many ideas!
Have you guys tried any projects using fabric paint before? I feel like the options are endless! I felt all inspired and clearly need to be doing more of it. I was thinking that some tea towels would be really cute. And I want to do more napkins with different patterns… maybe something geometric next time? Any other ideas of things you’ve seen?






Original article and pictures take http://www.hometalk.com/12191319/diy-watercolor-painted-napkins site