Firecracker!

I found this great placemat (?) at IKEA and knew it needed my crafty love and attention.

I chose a firecracker design for this and cut it out of vinyl thinking it would make a great stencil for the painting. I was wrong.

Just cut your stencil out of cardstock and hold it in place or tape it down.

I painted one or two sections at a time using a sponge brush.

 You have to use a lot of paint to get it down into the folds.

After each section dried, I just placed my stencil on and painted the next section until it was done.

I got really crafty when I did the lighter blue because I decided my design needed a little more pizazz. While looking for the glitter, I found this cool silver confetti. It is cool alright, but I kind of wished I had used glitter. The confetti was a little too thick for this project, but I still liked the end result. I just poured it over the wet paint, shook off the excess and then let it all dry.

I finished up with the red and then white over the blue paint--using my stencils.

Now I just need to refinish the little picnic table we rescued from someone's trash and we will be good to go!