Monet tabletop: leaf-shaped placemats and bright pink water lilies set the mood for spring - Brief Article

Sunset, April, 2003 by Mary Jo Bowling

Claude Monet captured the beauty of water lilies on canvas, and so can you--with a little help from your computer and local print shop. We used a lily pad to make a set of canvas placemats.

We bought a water lily plant ($20 at nurseries that sell water plants, or buy a silk water lily for $6), scanned a lily pad onto a computer disk, and took the image to a shop that makes outdoor banners. Many print or sign shops can scan the pad for you; subscribers can download our scan at www.sunset.com/home/pad.html

We had our lily pad enlarged to 15 by 13 inches--large enough for an oval placemat--and we had several images printed on a roll of outdoor canvas backed with vinyl. At stores like Kinko's, lengths of 3-foot-wide outdoor canvas run $21 per linear foot. A 3-foot-long sheet will yield five placemats for $63.

Cut the pad shapes to form placemats and arrange them on your table. To complete our setting, we floated real water lily blossoms ($5 each at a flower market) in glass bowls in the center of the table. Water lilies should be available at florists this month, but you can use pink Gerbera daisies, chrysanthemums, or dahlias instead.

We tied napkins with beargrass ($2 per bunch) and embellished them with lily pad-like Shortia, commonly sold as galax leaves ($2.50 per bunch). The resulting spring tabletop is as pretty as a picture.