Our Pollock Inspired Canvas Placemats

After creating our canvas place mats I have wanted to make another set – and we just finished them!!  I love these!  They work great both inside and out, easy to clean, add color and fun to the table -what’s not to like?  This time I made them just a little smaller and in addition to the place mats made coasters.  I love Pollock’s art work and wanted to some paint splattering – well, really I thought Stella would love to splatter paint.  Part of being creative is making a glorious mess that turns out to be beautiful and artistic!

Pollock Inspired Place Mats & Coasters

Items Needed

Artist canvas (can buy the roll on Amazon)
Paint (I get the small sample paints at Home Depot)
Stencils, sponges, etc.
Paint brushes
Water based poly-acrylic
Sewing machine
Matching thread or not (we used purple to match our dragon flies)

1. Cut a strip of canvas 72″ x 20″. Then cut that in half.  The first set of canvas place mats I made I left it one long strip and found it was hard to maneuver in our small space.

2. Decide what color you want your base to be and paint at least 2 coats – allowing plenty of time to dry in between coats.  You can paint on either side and make that your top, but the “real” top is the whiter side.

3. Since the focus art of this set of place mats was going to be the splattered paint – I went “light” on the other art work.  That being said, I decided to so one stencil of dragon flies in purple of course, our favorite color!  Allow to dry completely.

4.  Choose several colors of paint and gather your paint brushes.  You will need one paint brush for each color, plus one extra for the splattering.  Dip your paint brush into the paint – you want paint on the brush, but not overly excessive amounts.  Taking the other paintbrush, knock against the brush with paint – be careful – the paint with splatter.  Keep doing this until you have enough of that particular color and then move on to the next color.  Allow to dry.

 

 

 

 

5.  Place some of the base paint in a cup, add water and paint the back of the canvas.  The sides and ends will curl – that is ok.  When it had dried some I then hang on the clothes line and pin the sides to straighten it some.

6. Cut your 4 place mats, they should measure approximately 20″ x 15″ and then your coasters.  I was able to get 7 coasters.  To cut the coasters, I used a coaster as the template and cut a little larger.   Turn over each edge about 1/2″ and sew on the sewing machine.  Not all of my turned edges were the same width, but they were close.

 

 

 

 

7. Using the poly-acrylic, paint 3 coats on the top and 1 on the back.  These are especially great to use at the outside table.  All you need to do is sponge them off and that’s that – no laundry and they last a long time!

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2 Responses to Our Pollock Inspired Canvas Placemats

  1. Candace says:

    Very cool. It’s a similar process to the canvas rugs of the 19th century. They would use canvas and stencil it to look like carpet and then put a seal coat on it. Few canvas rugs have survived but there are a few. The dragonfly stencil is very cool. Nice job!!

  2. Jo says:

    They look so great and I love the color. Dragon flys ate in!

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