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Easy Kid-Crafted Dish towels Grandmas will treasure

 

 

 

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I’m so excited to share this super easy kid-crafted (and approved!) Dish towels project…if you are looking for a fun and memorable gift for grandma for Mother’s Day (or her birthday, or Christmas) this is a quick project that your kids will love doing and grandmas will treasure!

The inspiration for this idea came from the very talented Natalie Malan (www.nataliemalan.com). She was one of the other presenters on Studio5 during one of my visits and she shared her beautiful hand painted tea towels. You can watch her segment here.

I thought it would be a perfect way to combine kid art and a make a useful gift for grandmas. So we bought all of the supplies and painted dish towels for each month of the year for our grandmas for a Mother’s Day gift. I had each child pick two months of the year and choose two shapes to represent each month that they wanted to decorate with.

What you need for this project

 

12 Flour sack towels (also called tea towels) : This online price is about the same as what I paid at Wal-mart. I’ve also seen them at Sam’s Club in bulk.

Acrylic Paint

Tintable fabric medium : You combine this with your paint to make it stay on the fabric.

Paintbrushes

Potatoes

Tiny Cookie cutters or sharp knives to cut potatoes into stamps

How to paint tea towels

Natalie shared that they best way to paint these dish towels is using potatoes (made into stamps), and putting the paint directly on the potatoes so there isn’t as much paint pressed into the towel. Too much paint on the towel makes it hard and scratchy, which are not qualities you are hoping for in a dish towel.

After my kids chose their months and shapes, I cut potatoes in half and made potato stamps. If you have tiny enough cookie cutters (like these leaf shaped ones) it makes things a whole lot easier! With the cookie cutters I just pressed them into the potato, then used a knife to cut away the potato surrounding it.

 

 

 

We mixed the paint and the tinting medium (2 parts paint  to one part medium per bottle instructions) and then I spread the towels over cardboard. I gave my kids their stamps and let them go to town.

Now these are nowhere NEAR as beautiful as the ones Natalie made, but it is like kid art for grandma each month that she can use! Here are the shapes my kids picked if you need some ideas.

January- Snowflake and Party Hat (for New Year’s)

February- Hearts and kisses (My nine-year-old thought of the kisses and carved a pretty good kiss shape all by herself!)

March- Coins and shamrocks

April- Easter Eggs

May- Flowers and Leaves

June- Sunshine and Clouds

July- Red and Blue stars

August-Waves and Sunshine

September- Two different leaf shapes

October- Jack O’Lantern

November- Pilgrim hat and Feathers

December-Santa hat and Christmas tree

We wrapped the towels in a bundle with a special tag (that you can download for free in my Gift Printables Library by signing up below…also giving you access to tons of other free printables for your gift giving).  The tag says “Thanks for loving us the way you do/each day, each month/the whole year through.”

 

 

How much it costs

The flour sack towels are around $1 per towel. The tinting medium was $6, acrylic paints are around 75 cents each. If you have potatoes and paint brushes you could easily make a set of monthly towels for under $25 (cheaper if you have the acrylic paints around already!).

Who this gift is for

We made these kitchen towels for our grandmas for Mother’s Day, but you could easily give these for birthday, Christmas or a “just because we love you” gift.  I also think it would be a perfect gift for an aunt or  a teacher.

 

All of my kids had so much fun painting/stamping these towels for two of their favorite people in the world. The happy little guy above kept saying, “This is really, really good. Grandma and Grammy are going to LOVE this!” (No lack of self-confidence there! Haha!). I even got to make a few towels and it was really fun!

What do you think? Is there a flour sack towel project in your family’s future?

Happy Gifting!
Steph

 

 

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Jordy

Saturday 18th of November 2023

I love this idea and want to make it into christmas gifts this year! Do you just let it air dry? And is it machine washable/dryable?

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