Save a little extra money this Christmas by enlising your family to help make these fun placemats for your Christmas dinner.
At a dollar store or crafts store, buy plain single-colored vinyl placemats. Buy a few tubes of different colored fabric paints, as well. Have each member of the family design and paint their own vinyl placemat. They can use stencils to create snowmen, holly borders, mantles, Santas, stockings or Christmas trees. Although it may be tempting, try not to overdo the fabric paints on the placemats, as it will need to thoroughly dry before using. One more thing to consider is the thickness of the fabric paints. Plates and glasses will be resting upon the placemats, so you will want to keep the pictures you paint as even and as thin as you can make them.
Know those old Christmas cards from years past that have been accumulating in your attic? Now is the time to put them to good use. Cut out pictures from the Christmas cards and make a Christmas collage on some thick card stock cut out to be the size of a normal placemat. Or, have each family member create their Christmas "wish list" on the card stock placemats for a personal touch. Give them magazines, old cards and newspapers ads and then let them go to town cutting out gifts they want to receive at Christmas. Guests will have fun looking at the placemats and seeing the types of gifts the children or adults have on their wish list. The collage pieces should be glued or taped onto the card stock. Once the collage is dry, use contact paper to cover the entire placemat. This will create the water- and food-resilient coating for the placemat.
Placemats do not necessarily have to be the shape of a rectangle, nor do they have to have a vinyl or plastic surface. Create some fun and decorative placemats with inexpensive pieces of felt. For example, using a stencil, cut out a large snowflake pattern from a white piece of felt. This will be the placemat for your dinner plates. Then, cut out a snowflake pattern from the white piece of felt that is half or one-third of the size of the original snowflake. This smaller felt snowflake can be used as a coaster for your guest's drink. Do this for each pattern you make (like Christmas trees or snowmen), so that for each place setting you have one large decorative placemat and a smaller, matching coaster.
