By craft contributor Rachael of Penelope and Pip

Here at Penelope and Pip we are always looking for ways to brighten up our lunch times and make those precious midday moments when you get to have a break from work more fun. With that in mind, we recently came up with the idea for some fun place mats that will make your lunch (or breakfast or dinner) guests smile.

I know Liz is super crafty with the sewing machine, but for those of you like me that need a bit of extra help with sewing, the best part about this project is you can just embellish some place mats that you own that are already sewn up!  So get out your glue gun and those neon felt remnants from all the lovely neon projects you’ve been busy with this summer and let’s make the table more fun.

What you’ll need:

1. Place mats (I chose some similar to this – you can see they have a nice sewn edge)
2. Neon felt scraps
3. Scissors
4. Glue Gun
5. Word Template (see tips below)

Tip: When making your word template, choose a nice thick font that will be easy to cut out. A sans serif font makes a bold impact which is what you want with this project. I used Proxima Nova, but there are plenty of free fonts out there you could use.

If you print your word on thicker card stock you will only need to cut it out once which will save time as it will hold up when you use it to cut out the fabric.

Before you print, check you will be able to fit the word twice on your place mat.

Step 1:

Print your word template and cut the letters out. The beauty of the word “Yum” is there are no tricky insides of letters to cut out. Hooray!

Step 2:

Use your letter templates to cut out the felt letters. You could use a pin to secure the letters to the felt, however, I found it was fine to just cut around them. Felt is a great fabric to work with that way.

Once finished, you will have lovely neon words like this:

Step 3:

Set up your work station so that the glue gun is hot and ready to go and your letters are placed out in the colour order you like. It might be a good idea to measure a line on your place mat if you are worried about sticking the letters on straight. Be very careful with the glue gun and follow your manufacturers instructions as they can be very hot. You could use ordinary craft glue for fabric if you are doing this with littlies.

Step 4:

Stick your letters on to the place mat. TIP: Don’t do what I did in the above picture and glue the top word on first (so silly!). Instead, glue the bottom word on first to ensure you have enough room for both words (Luckily I did. Phew!)

Step 5:

Once your letters are glued on, wait for them to dry and then you can put your gorgeous new place mats out for lunch.

I promise they will make that lunchtime sandwich seem more yum!