Today's Five Minute Friday is coming at you late - kids and life before blogging, you know! But I did want to share the quick and easy way that I made these pretty place cards for my fall table.
Did you know that you can hand color stamps rather than just using an ink pad? I've had these Recollections brand brush markers for years, but I'd never tried them before.
The color palette for my fall kitchen decor was inspired by peacock feathers, so when I found this peacock stamp at Michaels, I knew it would make the perfect addition to my fall table. I got out my Recollections markers, and played around with various color combos until I found one that was just right.
The fine tip of the brush markers made it very easy to color each individual part of the rubber stamp.
Probably the most important tip you need to know when hand coloring stamps is that you need to "huff" on the stamp after coloring but before stamping - this re-moistens the ink so that you'll get nice, vibrant colors. I know this isn't the most attractive photo ever - but hopefully it clarifies what it is to huff on a stamp. :)
I then pressed the stamp firmly down on a piece of paper to test it out.
It looked just the way I envisioned...
Then I decided to get greedy to see if I could get a second vibrant feather without having to re-color the stamp. I huffed on the stamp again and pressed it to the paper a second time. No dice. Now, maybe there's a trick to this, but coloring the stamp was so quick and easy that I decided to just re-color it each time rather than researching how to get more than one stamp per coloring.
Now I was ready to make my place cards. I used a ruler and pencil to grid out eight 2"x4" place cards on to a piece of white card stock, then cut them out. I proceeded to color and stamp a peacock feather in the top center of each place card.
As soon as I was done with the stamp, I used a baby wipe to remove all of the excess marker ink to ensure that the stamp wouldn't get stained.
With nothing but the peacock feather on the white place cards, they looked a bit unfinished, so I decided to dress them up by adding a silver border around each using my silver metallic Sharpie. Quick and easy, but it made a big difference.
Since I was incorporating both gold and silver into my fall decor (like these metallic wine bottle vases, and my pumpkin tic tac toe), I used a gold metallic Sharpie to write names on the place cards.
There you have it, quick and easy, five minute place cards for your fall dinner party or Thanksgiving table setting.
To see more photos of the fall decor in our kitchen and throughout our house, take our Fall Home Tour.
If you are looking for even more seasonal inspiration, you might also be interested in these fall and Halloween projects:
Labels: autumn, crafts, entertaining, fall, Five Minute Friday, seasonal
