Make Your Own Placemats

Disney World Placemat

I am updating a previous post with my latest placemat.  I have re-cartooned my family as Disney characters.  I explained how to do this in this previous post

My middle daughter had a beach themed party.  I put the family and all of her friends who came in cartoon form in bathing suits.  Because my eldest is having a birthday, she wanted to take her true love to Disney for the first time.  She wanted it to be a family trip.  I thought she'd get a kick out of having her own birthday placemat to take to a restaurant.

In case you don't know this, Disney does birthdays UP, UP, UP.  They give you birthday badges at your resort.  These let the park cast members know.  Last year, the characters were waving madly at my friend from the floats, yelling, "Happy Birthday, Patty."  The restaurants kept giving us free desserts with candles in them.  

Above is the beach roulette placemat I made.  See previous post under parties.

I downloaded a spinner app on my iphone/ipad.

Below is one of the flag placemats I made for the Fourth of July.  I just keep recycling the plastic envelopes.   Keep reading below is site where you can order the envelopes.

   Flag placemats can be expensive for a big crowd.  I bought some nice one's on sale at Kohl's, but they didn't have many left.  I print out lots of cardstock placemats I design for parties.  I throw them out afterwards.  So, I started wondering if there were large, clear, plastic envelopes big enough to hold a placemat.


When my sister sent me this photo of her grandkids, I just had to enlarge it and put it in the envelopes for them to have their very own placemats.
This placemat has an enlarged picture of my nephews in a shopping cart.  I took a thumb drive to Staples and they enlarged it in ten minutes.  I had two made--one for each boy. 

   The  Jam Paper & Envelope  company had 12" x 18" envelopes.

  I ordered a double batch to get ready for a big Fourth of July gathering.  If you print out 2 sheets of card stock with the two images below, it won't be big enough.  So, I printed out a third striped sheet and divided it into five equal sections to make up the difference.  This, by the way, uses up a LOT of ink, but you can SAVE them for next year. You could save ink by making a patriotic border.
  

    A teacher friend came over and asked for two of the envelopes.  She said she couldn't wait to put maps, problems, and words in them to use with wipe-able markers.  So...I made you a transportation place mat for you that have kids crazy about this subject. 

      Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  I just need to cut them down a little to go in my plastic envelopes.  They sell these in ecru, which is an off-white.  I'll bet someone clever out there can do photo transfers or graphic transfers onto these.   I'll have to go to Pinterest and see how to do that.

Shark Party Placemat

 

Beach Birthday Placemat

Add caption

    I worked and reworked to get a complete flag made for the placemat.  I went onto the Staples website, but it was $7 each have them printed in 12" x 18" format.  So, I went back to the drawing board.  I used my Printmaster program to enlarge it.  It printed it out beautifully, but with only eleven stripes.  That was okay, but my hubby said, if you're going to do this, make sure the flag has all thirteen stripes.  

   So....the above stars should be printed out 7.75" wide by 6.50" high.  

Then print out three of the stripes per placemat.  You could probably do this cheaper at a copying store.  I had to cut and glue to make the flag stripes.  Then I just cut out the stars and glued them on top of the stripes.

Don't want to print things out.  Don't want to make clipart collages for placemats.  Okay,  I used Mydrap blue gingham cotton placemats that came on a roll from Amazon.com. They looked great in my rattan trays for my nautical theme.  AND...they can be hand washed and used again.  They are pretty thin, but it was fun to tear them off the roll. They are 12.6" x 18.1".  Couldn't be easier.  Buy the plain ones, some fabric markers or colored sharpies and draw your own.

Have fun.