Materials needed:
•1 yard of pre primed canvas
•Acrylic paints
•Polyurethane
•Paint brushes
•Pencil
•Painter’s tape
•Duct tape or No sew
•Stencils of letters
Directions:
•The first thing that you need to do is to cut out your ABC placemat to size. To do this you can use an old placemat to gauge the size, but keep in mind that children will be using these placemats so you might want them a little bit bigger than a normal dinner placemat. And also by making it bigger the kids will have room to look at their ABC’s
•Next you are going to want to fold the rough edges about 1 inch towards the back place mat.
•Then use duct tape to secure the edges in place. You can use duct tape because nobody is going to see the underside of the placemat anyway. But you can also use a product like No Sew or you can use fabric glue or even sew down the edges with your sewing machine.
•If you are going to be using No Sew then you want to make sure that you place a rag between the primed canvas and the iron. The reason for this is that the primer will melt and burn and it will also ruin your iron.
•Now you need to use painter’s tape to tape off a 2 inch border along the edges of the ABC placemat
•Now you are ready to add your letters to the middle of the placemat. You can paint the letters on freehand, you can trace stencils or you can use ABC magnets.
•Now you need to let your paint dry
•Once the paint has dried you are going to need to apply a few coats of polyurethane to the painted canvas. Make sure that you follow the directions on your polyurethane when applying the 3 coats that are recommended
•Allow the polyurethane to dry
•Once it has dried you can add embellishments or you can leave it as it is. Just keep in mind that the placemat will be getting wet so you want to avoid using anything that can’t get wet.