Our Hopeful Home: DIY Citrus Stamped Tea Towels: The Perfect Summer Craft

Looking for the perfect summer craft? This one's super easy, inexpensive

and really cute. I'm talking about DIY citrus stamped tea towels. You know,

those white cotton dish towels you can get at Wal-Mart in a package of five

for $5.00? Tea towels are one of my favorite crafting materials. I've created

graphic monogram transfers on them, as well as used them for pillow covers.

Now guess what I've done with them!

DIY Pillow Covers

Iron-on transfer monogram floursack pillow

Iron on transfer monogram pillow

I've seen this stamping craft done in more than a few places, so my way is a mish
mosh of what I learned from reading about other people's experiences. If you want
more info about it just go to Google images of citrus stamped tea towels and you'll
find some more examples of this cool craft.

Here's what you'll need to make yours:

DIY CITRUS STAMPED TEA TOWELS

MATERIALS

tea towels

small watercolor paintbrush

lemons and/or limes (your choice)

acrylic paint and fabric medium

(medium makes the paint washable)

fabric paint (your choice of colors)

paper plate

steam iron (optional)

I recommend ironing your towels first with a steam iron. They come with LOTS
of creases and wrinkles in them. You can skip pre-washing them if the package
says they've already been prewashed, as mine were. Then you're ready to go.

Be sure to place some sort of cardboard surface beneath the towels before you
start painting, because the paint will bleed through. Cut your fruit in half, and paint
the halves with a paint brush. Don't dip them in the paint! If you do, it will get ugly,
trust me. Not that I have personal knowledge of it or anything. And it's always a good
idea to practice on paper first to get the hang of it.

Here's my lime with yellow paint that I painted onto it with a small paintbrush.
Remember, don't put the wedge into the paint! I chose to use yellow and pink paint.
Aren't they the quintessential colors of summer? You could just as easily use lime
green and/or orange if those colors work for you and your kitchen or bathroom,
depending on where you'll be using these towels.

{*PLEASE NOTE: I've recently become an Amazon affiliate, so occasionally

you'll see a link to or ad for a product I've used or otherwise endorse. If you click
on the link and ultimately buy that product I'll receive a very small commission. But don't worry. I would never direct you to any product I would not use myself.*}

textile fabric medium for tea towel stamping project

Here's the fabric medium I used. The recipe on the bottle says to mix two parts paint
to one part medium. I originally used one tablespoon of paint to 1/2 tablespoon of
medium, but that was more than I needed!

paint and textile fabric medium mixture for citrus stamped tea towels

So when I made the pink paint mixture I only used one teaspoon of paint to
1/2 teaspoon of medium. That worked perfectly for me. You can also buy fabric
paint and avoid all this mixing but I found that it was cheaper for me to buy the
individual small paints and one bottle of medium, which I'll continue to use on other
projects for a long time to come.