Steinway Street: Dollar Store

Memorial Day weekend is just around the corner- yay for a day off from work! And to celebrate the upcoming holiday, I decided to make place mats for the occasion.

That's right- I made vintage American flag place mats! Want to see how I did it?

I started with bamboo place mats that I found for 99 cents.

I then raided my painting stash and got to work.

I started by taping the American flag onto my place mats with painter's tape.

Since I wanted these mats to look extra rustic, I ripped both sides of the tape which meant that there weren't any straight lines on the mat (not to mention that I had quite a ball of unusable tape pieces by the time I was done).

I then chose a rusty-red paint color, and mixed it with some water. You see, I wanted the paint to be a little runny so it would seep under portions of the tape. In addition, the watery-paint also ensured that some of the bamboo striations would show through.

After I had painted the red portions of the flag...

I mixed up some blue paint...

And slathered it onto the upper-left corner of each mat. (FYI: I chose to forgo the white stars in my rustic/vintage design approach.)

When the paint had dried, I peeled off the tape to reveal the white lines of the flag. And while it looked okay, I wasn't finished with it yet! (PS: don't you just love the look of the red and blue paint that snuck under the tape edges?)

So I squirted a bit of brown paint into a dish and mixed it with a generous amount of water to create a stain.

Then I painted the stain onto the mat before removing the excess with a paper towel. Here's a view of the mat halfway through the process- see how the left side of the flag looks a little richer? That's my faux-stain!