“So….,” says Steve with studied casualness, “Um, I noticed a lot of new towels in our house…?”

My awesome hubby gets a lot of points for calmly observing many the craft obsession. Dozens of beaded snowflakes? Check! Table full of dip-painted utensils? Check! Washing machine filled with felting? Check! He rarely seems phased, so I know this must look particularly strange.

I’m stamping tea towels to give as holiday gifts for our teachers and coworkers this year. And there are a lot of them!

Supplies:

• Tea towels – I am using Liliane Collection Kitchen Dish Towels, which are absorbent and don’t wrinkle too much in the wash.
• Rubber stamps and cookie cutters – I picked up some charming stamps from Yellow Owl Workshop. I also used cookie cutters and made made some of my own stamps by sticking Adhesive Foam shapes to the backs of stamp blocks.
• Fabric paint – I used both these Jacquard Products Textile Inks as well as regular craft paint mixed with Textile Medium
• A Hard Rubber Brayer helps apply paint evenly to the stamps

Instructions:

• Prewash and iron the dish towels
• For the stamps, spread some ink on a plate or flat surface, spread it with the brayer, and then roll onto your stamp and stamp the fabric
• For the cookie cutters, you can dip the cookie cutter into the paint directly

Fun citrus print! I made this stamp by sticking adhesive foam to the wooden block from another stamp. I spread the paint onto a flat surface with a brayer and then rolled it on to the stamp.

• Hang the towels to dry. This drying rack came in handy!

• I read a lot of ideas about how to heat set the paints to make the colors last. I ended up letting them air dry for several days, running the towels on the hottest setting in my dryer for an hour and then ironing to finish them. I tried using the oven to heat set, because the ironing was so tedious, but a few towels got scorched, so I would try that with caution.

I love how our new towels look in our new kitchen!

Look who joined in the fun!

And off we went to play Santa!

I’d love to try some more designs soon. Check out these other cute stamps from Yellow Owl Workshop!

Yellow Owl Workshop Mushroom Snail Stamp Set

Yellow Owl Workshop Apple Honeybee Stamp Set

Yellow Owl Workshop Le Menu Stamp Kit

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

“Jewels”