Burlap and Chalkboard Placemats

If you haven't been able to tell already, I super love burlap. I think its a girls best friend :) Its up there with my love of pillows and cedar planks. Which is sayin something cuz I have a bazillion things made of cedar planks and about a gazillion pillows. So, pretty much you can say I'm in heaven with a  burlap pillow ;).

I had my wonderful sponsor burlapfabric.com send me over some burlap to create something with and I knew the perfect thing to make...place mats. I have a slew of place mats, but they never get used. I think its cuz they are all white and I'm kind of freaked about letting someone eat spaghetti on them. lol. Plus, my table has been completely neglected ever since I took off the white cedar planks that were on it. Which by the way, these place mats would have looked fab on -nothing goes better together than white and burlap...it would have been a beautiful rustic dream :). I'm kind of regretful I took those planks off :(...but my wall is very thankful lol. I guess I just need to get around to building a new beautiful white rustic farmhouse table :)

Anyway. I wanted to have a little fun with these place mats, so I measured out about the same size as one of my other mats, cut, then frayed the edges by pulling on one or two string at a time. It left me with a huge mess afterwards, but you have to sacrifice in that kind of way ;) lol. I then ironed it and starched it a little to make it lay flat.

Next was to create a changeable 'place card'. I had a wonderful idea to use some of my chalkboard paint and adhere it straight to the burlap. It worked. But.....well, you can see for yourself. It wasn't optimal. But, the chalk did come off, and I was able to write on it somewhat easily. It just wasn't something you can see very well :)

I really liked the idea of a somewhat permanent place card -but changeable at the same time, so I went rumaging through my wood pile and found some leftover birch veneer that the hubs used for his poker table. (yes, he's somewhat crafty lol). I wanted something really thin and this was the thinnest piece of wood I could find. A piece of sheet metal would have worked wonderfully also.  I cut some pieces up at about 2x5 inches. I painted one side with white chalkboard paint, and the other blue so I could interchange them with my decor. Just in case, the ingredients to make the chalkboard paint is really simple, just use 1 cup of acrylic paint to 2 tablespoons of unsanded tile grout and mix! Easy peasy

Once the paint was dry...which by the way, took like 2 days less time to dry then painting straight onto the burlap, which was nice lol :) ...I then drilled a hole in each corner. (drying time should really only take about an hour for this)

And took one of the pieces that I pulled from the burlap, thread it through the holes, through the burlap, and tied it in the back.

Pretty simple really. The best part is that you can easily undo the string to the place card and turn it over for a different color, or remove it all together.

And since its chalkboard, you can change that whenever also :) I liked the idea of the chalkboard straight on the burlap, but really, doing it this way with the removable wood works so much better.

Now my dining room doesn't look so neglected :) If you get a real good look, you can see that I haven't moved my jute rug back in here yet either. lol. Its still in my living room, where the pup is actually currently snoozing :) I guess its getting more and more comfortable...or he's getting more and more use to it...