Botanical Placemats To Make With Kids

Botanical Placemat

School is out and kids are home. This quick and easy DIY project will teach them about the flowers blooming in your garden. In this tutorial we are using pressed flowers. If you do not have pressed flowers, use these flower pressing instructions. In less than an hour you can whip up fun botanical placemats.

What You Need:

One of the best things about this project is that you need very few things. You can usually find contact paper in the cleaning supply section of your local grocery store or big box store.

• Clear or Transparent Contact Paper
• An Assortment of Pressed Flowers and Leaves
• Cardstock
• Glue
  

  Supplies

Step 1:
First, arrange your cardstock how you want it. In this example, a white sheet of cardstock was cut down to a slightly smaller size and layered on top of the lavender sheet.

Step 2:
Decide where you want to place your flowers and leaves and then glue them down. Use just enough glue to tack it temporarily to the paper because the next two steps will secure the flowers permanently.

Step 3:
Cut two pieces of contact paper that are two inches longer and two inches wider than the placemat you have designed. Peel back the backing of one sheet and lay it, sticky side up on a hard flat surface. Carefully place your placemat on top of the contact paper.

Step 4:
Peel the back of the backing off the second sheet of contact paper. Gently lower the contact paper down on top of the placemat, allowing the overhang of the first sheet to stick to the overhang of the second sheet. Carefully smooth out the contact paper and get rid of any air bubbles.

Step 5:
Using either a pair of scissors or a paper trimmer, trim all four sides of the contact power, leaving a quarter inch all the way around.

Just repeat this process until you have as many placemats as you need. This is a great way to get kids involved in decorating a table for the holidays. For father’s day, let the kids draw a picture on a piece of cardstock and turn them into your placemats for your father’s day dinner.