Fourth Of July Star Stamped Placemats

We made these Fourth of July star stamped placemats for The Wave magazine. At first we were going to stencil the placemats, then we thought, “What if we made giant rubber stamps?!” We brainstormed a little and figured out we could make our own over-sized rubber stamps using cork board.

We cut the cork board out into the shape we wanted to stamp. (Easy since we chose a star!) Then mounted the “stamp” on a piece of wood. Since we didn’t have a giant stamp pad to ink the rubber stamp, we painted the stamp with craft paint. It worked perfectly! And we were able to decorate a stack of inexpensive bamboo placemats in no time. Much faster than stenciling! Here’s how we did it!

How To Make Star Stamped Placemats

Materials To Make One Of The Stamped Placemats

1 bamboo placemat
2 cork tiles, 12″ x 12″
¼” Thick plywood square, 10 inches by 10 inches
¼” Thick plywood square, 6 inches by 6 inches
Wood glue
White chalk
X-Acto knife
Masking tape
Plaid FolkArt craft paint, Cardinal Red
Small foam paintbrush
Paper plate

Steps

1. To make the first stamp, use the chalk to draw a 9 inch star on one of the cork tiles. Then draw a 5-inch star on the other cork tile. Cut the stars out of the cork board using an X-Acto knife. Be careful!

2. Use the wood glue to glue the cork stars rough-side down onto the plywood squares. We weighed down the stamps with books and let the glue cure for 30 minutes.

3. If your bamboo placemats have fabric trim around the edges, cover the fabric trim with masking tape to keep it from getting stamped.

4. To “ink” the stamps, squeeze red craft paint onto a paper plate and use the foam paint brush to dab the paint onto the surface of the stamp.

5. Stamp the bamboo placemat with the large star stamp and small star stamp to create your own star design. We did three stars per placemat.

We got our bamboo placemats at the dollar store. So we were able to make a party’s worth of stamped placemats for our Fourth of July party and still stay within budget! We used the placemats on reusable trays for our outdoor barbecue. They were a big hit!
Happy Fourth of July!
Jennifer & Kitty