tutorial

Easy DIY Tassel Placemats

Tassel placemats are so easy to make from drab placemats. I love re-styling simple things for our home. It usually comes in the form of spray paint but this time, embroidery thread was the material! I recently did this to my happy yellow lamp and had been wanting to use my thread to make something else happier! I found two plain-Jane placemats that I had bought forever ago and thought they’d be perfect to spruce up with my thread.

easy diy tassel placemat

 

I’d seen this idea on Design Sponge a year ago and I’m not sure why I didn’t make these sooner because they’re super fun! I wanted to make mine a bit more bold so I used brighter thread and made my tassels larger. The first step was to choose my thread colors. I used a full spool of thread for each tassel.


thread

Easy DIY Tassel Placemats

I used my phone as a template for the length of the tassels. I wrapped almost the entire spool around my phone, leaving only enough to wrap the top of the tassel (around 4 inches.) This is not an exact measurement. Like all diy projects, just do what size you think will look best. If it doesn’t look how you envisioned it to look, just make a new one. 🙂

phone template

sew tassel

I followed this tutorial to finish each tassel and began sewing them onto the placemats. I had no specific way to sew the tassels on other than that I wanted them to be secure enough to not fall off after a few uses. It looks quite haphazard from the back but it’s not very noticeable from the front. If I were going to do this project again, I would have bought an embroidery needle to attach the tassels using the same thread.

 

I sewed 4 tassels per side (16 tassels total) but you could do as many as you like. I think they turned out very festive! They’d be perfect for a Cinco de Mayo party or deck BBQ!

warm placemat

both placemats

placemats set

On a scale of simplicity I’d give this project a 2 out of 10. For me, it was free because I had all materials on hand but this project would be an inexpensive way to make plain placemats happier! I also made a few tassels as bookmarks and to put on my keyfab that make me smile to use them. 🙂 Has anyone made tassels for any of their projects before? Any suggestions on how I could have made the attachment cleaner looking? I’m sure no one would notice if I didn’t point it out but I always see those kind of ‘flaws.’ Now I need to go get some Mexican for dinner tonight since I have these set out!

Other simple crafts:

Simple Embroidery for Beginners

Sewing Machine Cover

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Watermark Your Photos-PicMonkey

Hey techies! Today I’m sharing another PicMonkey tutorial on how to watermark your photos. I did a post on making a PicMonkey Invitation a couple months ago and several people have asked what program I use to make my graphics. PicMonkey is extremely user friendly and free (unless you want to upgrade to Royale.)

watermark-with-picmonkey

I, personally, don’t use watermarks on my photos because I use a LOT of photos in my blogs and honestly, I just forget. It has nothing to do with the difficulty of the task. The first step is to open www.picmonkey.com in your browser (I know…duh…but it is the first step.) Next we’ll make a watermark that you can use to stamp onto each of your photos so you won’t have to re-create a new watermark every time you edit a photo. Click on the design button on PicMonkey’s homepage.

transparent-canvasIn the ‘crop’ menu on the left, click the box for ‘transparent canvas’ and hit ‘apply.’ This will make your watermark only show the text/image over your photo.

textAt this point, you’ll most likely want to use the ‘add text’ menu or the ‘overlay’ menu (the butterfly.) I wanted my name as the watermark so I clicked the ‘Add Text’ button and a text box popped up on my canvas as well as a text window to adjust the size, orientation, color etc.

font-fadeFor the purpose of this tutorial, I left the text black but for my actual blog I would use white and fade it so it would show up better on my photos. I might even make a white version and a grey version in case I have an image with a white background. The above photo actually has the window for the arrow rather than the text but I wanted to point out where the fade slider is for the text or image. I love PicMonkey because you can use their free fonts, their Royale fonts and all of your existing fonts on your computer. If you want a TON of fonts but don’t want to pay the extra for Royale you can download free fonts at DaFont.com or Google.com/fonts.

geometricIf you want some sort of boarder around your text you can use the ‘geometric’ option from the ‘overlay’ menu. I chose a black rectangle that I enlarged and rotated. I right clicked on the black rectangle to bring up a menu where I ‘sent to back’ so it would fall behind my text.

layered-boarderThere are literally billions of different options for making your watermark. A lot of bloggers write out their name or full url and place it in the lower right or left hand corner of each picture. Some bloggers have more of an image stamped with their ‘seal’ somewhere on their photo. You will only want to have the border if you want it to really stand out on your photo.

cropYou’ll want to use the ‘crop’ menu to crop your photo as ‘no fixed proportions’ so you can outline the area you’ve designed.

save-sizeOnce you’re satisfied with your watermark, hit ‘save’ at the top of your screen. Name your file and re-size it’s dimensions. You’ll want to change your size to something much smaller; anywhere from 100-300 depending on how large you want your watermark. You can also just leave it large and re-size it when adding it to your photo.

adding-watermarkTo add your watermark to a photo, open your photo in a new PicMonkey tab and click ‘edit’ from the homepage. Once you’ve selected the photo you want to watermark, click the ‘overlay’ menu (butterfly) and click ‘your own’ to add your watermark. Resize as needed.

watermark-example-1Here is the watermark I made for this tutorial but I’ve also made a few others in the past when I was trying to decide if I wanted to watermark my photos.

watermark-example-2watermark-example-4watermark-example-7Yes, the theme for the photo bomb was ‘my babies.’ If I come into a problem with people stealing my photos, I’ll probably start adding a watermark. For now, the disclaimer on my ‘about me’ page is comfort enough. I may be too trustworthy but that’s ok. Have you run into copy write problems with your photos in the past? Do you use a watermark now? Aren’t my babies the cutest?

*For a tutorial on how to make the Nutella Parfait on the title photo, click here and for the Gooey Granola Bars click here (both of which will have you thanking me.)

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