DIY print tea towels

This week I have been investigating how to keep your washing up essentials organised to keep your sink-side looking beautiful.

In addition to my guide to beautifully designed sink-side accessories and inspirational images from the www. that I posted here, I am today sharing how I printed up some plain white tea towels , a kitchen sink-side essential, to inject some personality into my kitchen:

As with my DIY printed coasters, I simply used some hexagonal cookie cutters to print  the pattern onto  plain white tea towels, and of course I used fabric paint instead of acrylics...

(Just ignore the fabric pen in the picture, above, as I didn't use it in the end...;))

Of course, if you'd like to print up your own tea towels, put your own spin on them to make them personal to you and fit in with your tastes and decor.....this tutorial is merely meant to inspire your creativity and show you how easy it is to customize everyday items in a decorative way...beautifying your home essentials.

Here's what I did when I made mine:

I mixed up the fabric paints to create the colours that I wanted: a minty blue, a greeny-yellow and some white + a coral shade that really pops! This is the same colour combination I used on my cork coasters, and I love it!

Step 1:

I wanted to create a water colour splat effect as a base on the tea-towels, before printing with the cookie-cutters,
So I wet the plain tea towels and placed them on top of an old rag-rug (to protect my work surface)....
Then I watered down some of the fabric paint, to make it a bit more runny, before simply splatting it onto the wet tea-towels.....

This is great fun, and little miss Moo helped me!

We created some faint, irregular splatter patterns using all the colours, then hung the tea towels out to dry.

Then I ironed the tea towels to set the paint.

Step 2:

Next , I used the un-watered-down  fabric paints to print the hexagonal patterns on the paint-splattered tea-towels.

I painted the thicker side rim of the cookie-cutter shapes with fabric paint, then simply pressed onto the tea towels, in an irregular pattern....

When I was happy with the way it looked, I ironed , again, to set the paint.

We made 3 tea-towels in this way, each one a little different from the other:

I am so pleased with how mine turned out.

Tea towels are a kitchen essential, and I use mine to dry the dishes after washing up, wipe down the sides and to soak up spills and protect my furniture etc...

Bu customizing my house-hold essential, like these, I am adding a personal touch to my interiors, and making my everyday necessities a little more attractive...

...which is what my current post series BEAUTIFUL UTILITY is all about.

Next week I'll be looking at the kitchen as a whole, and I will be sharing my picks of all those little and large items that are necessary in a functional kitchen, but with focus on the aesthetics as well as the functionality of design....plus, of course, anther little DIY!

Hope to see you back here then!

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