Handmade napkin rings are one of those little touches that add charm to your table. Debbie Stapley, host of Crafts and Company, shows ways to add this easy-to-make accessory to your party table. Make a delicious Italian dinner, and use colorful ingredient cans to liven up your party table. Bright-yellow flowers in a big tomato can serve as a centerpiece, a crabmeat can becomes a nut cup, and tomato-paste cans live on as napkin rings ( figure A).
Napkin rings can be made inexpensively with things you have around the house. Circle stems of long-stemmed silk flowers to make easy-as-can-be napkin rings. Or use them as place-card holders--just slip a place card in the rolled-up stem. A length of paper-covered wire bent into a circle forms the base for a variety of decorative napkin rings. Add a tiny raffia bow, and use hot glue to attach a small leaf and a nut for a fall-themed napkin ring (figure B).
Braid decorative twisted cording to make an elegant napkin ring (figure C). Cut three 10" lengths of decorative cording, and tape them together at one end. If you're using twisted cording, tape each individual end as well to prevent raveling. Braid the cording to the length necessary for the size napkin ring you want, and wrap a piece of tape around the braid at that point. Cut off the extra cording. Hot-glue the ends of the braid together, and use narrow gold braid to cover the tape and glue.
Little Drum Napkin Rings Materials:
Cardboard tubes from paper toweling or toilet tissue
Black and red felt
Scissors
Craft glue
Dimensional glue
Decorative paper brads
- Cut a 1 1/2" length of cardboard tubing.
- Cut a rectangle of felt 3" wide (twice the length of the tubing) that just fits around the tube.
- Squirt craft glue on one side of the felt piece, and center the cardboard tube on it. Hold the felt in place on the tube, then tuck the ends to the inside. Let dry.
- Cut a strip of red felt about 1" wide, center it on the black strip, and glue in place.
- When the glued-on red strip is dry, look at the tube from the top, and visually divide it into four sections. Put a dot of dimensional paint on the border of the red strip at each dividing mark. Add corresponding dots to the other side of the red border, then connect the dots in a crisscross pattern with dimensional paint.
- Hot-glue a small decorative brad at the dots where the crisscrosses meet.
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