Are you sick of looking at your old dated placemats? Or maybe you're like me - had enough of constantly washing them and want something that doesn't look like a Disney movie?

For this project I bought a pack of six new placemats from the dollar store. This is what they looked like:

You might have guessed it: not my cup of tea! For the makeover I picked these colorful polkadots. Not only do they appeal to the kids, they also match with my bar stools and I like the look of them too!

I started by measuring the placemats and then marked it on the backing paper of the sticky back plastic. For these placemats I allowed an overhang of 1-2 cm on each side and the reason for this I'll tell you soon.

I peeled approximately 4 cm off from one of the short ends of the backing paper and positioned it on the placemat.

I gently applied 2 cm of the film to the placemat and the remaining overhang of 2 cm I attached to the working table. This made the thin placemat stay in place while I used my both hands for the next step.

From here I followed the normal guidelines and pulled the backing paper with one hand and smoothed the sticky back plastic to the placemat with a squeegee. At the end I cut the remaining overhang off with a sharp knife. Here's the end result:

Lessons learned from this project

• allow for an extra overhang if the placemat is thin and won't stay in place by itself
• alternatively get a friend or family member to gently hold one hand on the placemat

Skill Level

 This is definitely an entry level. The number one challenge is to keep the placemat still while working on it. No pulling over edges required.