TABLE SETTING

One of the things girls most love is having a tea party. Well to do that you need table place settings and, usually a centerpiece. You can get some pretty placements in many places or you can make this your very own by having personalized place settings that reflect what your little world is like which you create yoursef or with your little girl friends: RUFFLES & RIBBONS GIRLS' HOME is right here to help. We often host tea parties for meetings of D'Arielle Ladies Society members as well as the annual Foundress Week events and our clubs, TIARA GIRLS CLUB, RUBBER GIRLS CLUB; which Mommy should have made you join already, and DOLLY GIRLS CLUB, so we know how to do this and so can you.

As you see, these are not decorated. that means this is a do-it-yourself thing until I make up some that have picutres in place. This is because placemats, placecards and centerpices are very presonalized or topic-centered. Little Girls like to have their very own designs and if the little one is a rubber diaper girl you will want hers to feature rubber panties and babydolls, bibs, bottles and pacifiers. You will want two things if you have not already gotten them

the RUFFLES & RIBBONS GIRLS' HOME Picture Package. Pictures are already in bitmpa form and may be used straightaway

FairyWand

To prepare:

create a work folder on your hard drive
GET THE IMAGES NOW: PLACEMAT PLACECARD CENTERPIECE and save the images to that folder by clicking on the image names and Save image'ing to that folder
When you want to actually make the item. open your drawing application then Save As a different name. that keeps this one untouched to be used over again and creates one that you will actauly use.
Convert the new image(s) to bitmap, or if you have IrfanView, you can do both in one operation with Files/Save as
Select and copy the picture you want form your Picture Package folder, come back to RUFFLES & RIBBONS or go to Google or Yahoo search/images. Select a catagory and look at the pictures.
When you find the one you like, save it as or convert it to a bitmap. Best of all, you can use your own images from pictures you take or those you draw Placemat
1. Use your drawing program. Use Paste From to get the image then resize it to fit the place for the picuture on your placemat. It must completely cover the box that says "Picutre"
2. Paste it in place
3. Print out.
Place card: Do prety much the same, using the same image. Hwever, you will notice that there is a line for the persons name. Here you can do one of two things
- put in your name with a pretty font that you have or can get then print it out.
- Print it out and then write in or have a grownup write in your name with silver or gold ink
To finish the centerpiece mat you will just decorate it with pictures
You can save the images once you have them made so that you can use them again

After awhile, you may wish to go beyond what is here in the way of decorations for the placemant. Indeed, you can propbably become very artistic. This may lead you to want to keep them for a while longer. To do this, you may wish for a placemat protector. This can be made also.

MATERIALS, SUPPLIES & TOOLS
- crystal clear plastic
- Glue, preferably Marine Goop
- scissors
TO MAKE
1. Since the placemat is 16x12. Cut a pice of plastic that is about 20 x 16 so that there will be a 2" overlap on each side.
2. Fold each side those 2 inches sharply first along the length then the width. The folds alont the width will overlap those along the length so that there will be 4 layers of material
3. Glue the corners of the width fold to those of the lenlengthwise fold and let dry
4. TO USE: lay the prtector so that the folded side is up. slide the sides of the p;ccemat, face down, into the pockets and turn it over and use

. This will outlast many placemats, or you can make a set of placemts and change them from day to day

For the place card, after you have made and signed, you may wish to make it a but sturdier. While you would not really want to go through all the work that you did for the placemat, you may want to stregnthen the material and protect it so that you can use it more than 3 or 4 times. Craft places sell things to put on paper items to make them a bit more durable. It would not hurt to do that with the placemats too. It will make them last much longer than if you did not. This is called "doping" and that which you use is called "dope". Model builders who use thin paper for the outside surfaces of their models have known about this for decades It was done with the cloth coverings of wings on the old wooden airplanes many times and you can get a very glossy surface with it.