diy confetti tea towels

As I look around at my unfinished, cluttered house, I think of this quote:

“If you wait until you have enough money to decorate and make your home your own, it will never happen.  If you wait until you can afford to buy everything new, you are missing the point.  It is the old, the new, the made, the hand-me-down, the collected, the worn (but loved) things in your home that make it your own.”

So I’m not waiting anymore.  Not waiting to harvest all the moola from our money tree or the windows to have all their trim, or the siding to be finished.  I’m all for doing the most with the little we have, so in the midst of all the custom orders I’ve been working on (yahoo!), I’ve also decided to dedicate time each week to create for our home.  Small things, big things, it doesn’t matter.  It all adds up to us having a house that feels like a home, like Us – even if we still have drywalling and painting and flooring to finish.  Which means more DIY posts and home updates for you!

This week, I’ve been thinking about our kitchen.  This fabric will eventually become curtains for the big window over the sink and I LOVE it.  So much that I haven’t been able to cut into it yet….  That’s a thing for me.  I buy these awesome fabrics and then I just have to leave them alone for a while and stare at them before I actually take a needle and thread to them.  This one is “French Roast” by Michael Miller.

{Also another thing for me – I can name most of the fonts that appear on this fabric.  ”Mocha” is in Deming, “cappuccino” is in American Purpose, “shot of espresso” looks a lot like Pointedly Mad, and “french roast” is in Bebas, which I love muchly.  (It even appears on this site.)  Anyway….. tea towels, right?  Onward.}

These towels are so easy.  From start to dry time I’d say it took about 20 minutes or so and it’s simple enough even for those of you who say you were born without the crafty gene.  Plus who doesn’t look the festive look of confetti!  All you need are some blank tea towels (I bought a pack of 4 at Target for $3.99), paint pouncers (aka circle paint sponge thingers), and some paint.  You can use fabric paint here, but I find that the colors are limited and expensive.  So I splurged on some Martha Stewart Fabric Medium (with a 50% of coupon, I scored it for $5 at Michaels), which I can mix into the acrylic crafts paints I already have.  Brilliant.  The fabric paints I used are also Martha Stewart brand, but you can use anything here.  In case you’re wondering, the colors I used are Pollen, Pink Dahlia, and Pool.

Prewash and iron your towels.  I wanted to cover just the bottom portion of my towel with confetti, so I marked about 10 inches up from the edge as a guideline.  That Fixion pen is my #1 MUST HAVE item when I do any fabric project because I can mark all over the place, and the ink disappears with a touch of a hot iron.  Get some.

From here, you want to mix your paint with your medium, 2 parts paint to 1 part medium.  I didn’t measure.  Who has time for that?  Just eyeball it.  Because I didn’t want to have to waste time washing and drying supplies between colors, I just mixed my paints in 3 separate containers and used 3 of the sponges.  Remember to mix more than you think you need!  The medium lightens the shade of paint a teensy bit, so it’s better to mix more than to run out and not be able to exactly match the colors.  Mix and pounce.  You really can’t goof this part up.

Once you’re happy with your design, let it air dry.  I hung mine over the shower rod.  Once it’s dry, heat-set the paint with a warm iron, front and back.  (This step makes your towel washable.)  Then hang and tell everyone in your family that this towel is not to be used for cleaning mud off their shoes or juice spills.  Actually it’s not for touching at all.  Ever.

Bam – super easy, super cute kitchen towels.  And just imagine the possibilities – holiday colored towels, confetti potholders, charming housewarming gifts.  You can pounce just about anything.  Also, am I the only one who thinks of Tigger when I hear the word pounce?  :)

♥, Ashley