Ghostly Halloween placemats

Hands-on time: Less than one hour.
Total time: Fabric drying time is a few hours in the sun, and three minutes of heat setting time with an iron.
Skill: Easy.
Cost estimate: Less than $13 for the materials.

Materials & Tools

• Fabric placemats (this is a perfect project for recycling placemats with slight stains) or trick-or-treat fabric tote bags (use light coloured fabrics)
• Plastic sheet or garbage bags
• Masking tape
• Stir sticks
• Paintbrush, 1-inch (2.5 cm)
• Water in a disposable foil pie plate
• A paint tray
• Transparent and shimmer opaque Setacolor fabric paints by Pébéo (I used florescent yellow 31, florescent orange 32, florescent green 34, shimmer black 79 and shimmer bronze 72)
• Gutta liner by Pébéo, black
• Cut-out shapes of spooky Halloween creatures using cardboard or flexi-foam - ghosts, pumpkins, bats, witches, "0s", circles or text letters in assorted sizes
• Scissors

Stir up the scare factor just in time for a haunting Halloween feast. Liven up your mealtimes with ghostly placemats for the whole family or for a party.

Pre-wash the fabric items - don't use bleach or softeners - dry and iron. Cover your work area with a sheet of plastic or several plastic garbage bags and secure in place with masking tape. Doing this prevents the fabric or paints from sticking to your work surface. Lay the placemats over the plastic sheet and tape along the edges for stability while you paint.

Stir the fabric paint colours before using. Place the transparent and shimmering Setacolor paints in a paint tray, and water in a foil pie plate. Apply a light coat of water with a paintbrush to the surface of the placemats. Doing this before applying the colours will prepare the fabric surface and make the colours blend and bleed easily to create unique gruesome effects.

Starting with black, lightly dip the brush in water, then in the black paint. Go wild with creative strokes, making zigzag types of strokes across the placemat surface. Repeat the same steps to apply the remaining colours. Keep overlapping the different colours, applying each one in the opposite direction. The result is a big, colourful, morbid mesh.

Draw several circles or spooky-creature shapes in assorted sizes directly onto cardboard or flexi-foam and cut them out with scissors.

Remove the tape from around the placemats, paint the borders if needed. Place the placemats on a clean plastic sheet, on a table in a sunny area of your home, or outside if it's a nice day. Scatter the cut-out shapes over the painted surface; keep in place with small rocks if desired. The placemats will dry completely within a couple of hours. Once fully dried, remove the shapes. Set the fabric paints by ironing the placemats for three minutes with the setting on cotton or high. Once the paint is set, the fabric items are machine washable and dryer safe.

Halloween tote bags

Put a piece of flexi-foam inside the tote bag to protect the other side. For the tote bags, you might want to keep the painting part simpler by painting clean, long, straight lines - horizontal or vertical - applying one colour at a time next to each other - orange, green and yellow, for example. Dip a fine paintbrush in shimmering black paint and paint outlines of your favourite Halloween creatures. The black lines will bleed into the wet bright colours, to create a frightful effect. Paint the handles and the other side if desired, or sew on reflector tape.

Older children might want to create more spirited details; they can use a Gutta fineliner to draw directly on the fabric, let the Gutta dry, and then fill in the spaces with assorted paint colours, and let dry, heat set with an iron.

Variations

• Children can use old bed linens, pillowcases and sheets to create their own spooky bedroom space. Ideal for making ghost, mummy and skeleton costumes; paint on silver accents for bones.
• Easy and inexpensive last-minute Halloween décor tricks: scatter gauze strips under placemats and leave them hanging over the sides of a table; glue spooky wrapped chocolate finger shapes to plastic utensils or plastic spiders around candle pillars; put a pumpkin on a cake stand and surround it with moss and chocolate fingers, insert the tips of lollipops all around the pumpkin - they make a ghastly party decoration and a real treat for the goblins that come calling.