Materials:

As I’m sure you know, kids can be messy. Having 20 of them run around your house during a birthday party, well, can sometimes result in a cleaning disaster. These placemats won’t save your house from the horrors of adolescent energy, but they might keep your tabletops just a little bit cleaner.  

Creating the Confetti

1. Choose Your Character

You can purchase confetti; My team decided to personalize this project even further by using our Cricut machine. To really nail down our theme (Malibu Barbie Pool Party) I chose shapes from the Cricut design store (or made my own) like the Barbie logo, suns, flowers, sunglasses, and palm trees.

2. Time to Weed

I cut out the shapes on brightly colored cardstock from my local craft store. It was pretty difficult to weed some of these designs (especially the Barbie logo), so put aside enough time and patience to get this done! As you can see, we mixed our customized confetti with store-bought confetti to fill out the placemats. 

Assembling the Placemats

1. Prep the Vinyl

Cut the vinyl to your desired specifications. We cut 13.5” x 18” rectangles, but we encourage you to experiment with different shapes like circles, or hearts! You’ll need two sheets of vinyl for each placement. 

2. Confetti!!

Because we wanted to ensure the Barbie logos were all oriented correctly, we hand-placed our confetti onto the vinyl sheets (and sprinkled the glitter over top) before we sewed the top sheet in place. If your design is less specific, I recommend sewing three sides together, then inserting your confetti before sewing the last side together. The vinyl we used stuck to the cardstock confetti pretty well, so we didn’t have any issues with confetti falling out while sewing the two sides together.

3. Sew-it-Up

Regardless of your confetti-placement method, sew around the border using a zigzag stitch. Unless you have a teflon sewing foot that will easily glide over the vinyl, you will need to make sure you keep the vinyl moving while you are sewing. 

Materials

• Confetti OR Cardstock to make your own confetti
• Chunky Glitter
• Clear Marine Vinyl 4mm
• Sewing Machine
• Coordinating Thread