Reusable Decorative Placemats
Surface Pattern & Product Design

2014

Surface pattern and product design for Handmade By Me.

The idea for these placemats started when I wanted to have Blue Willow plates for the dinner at my wedding, but we didn't have own enough for everyone, and we didn't have enough of a budget to be able to buy in the quantity we needed. So in order to try and recreate a similar affect, I came up with the idea of using plain white plates which are easily sourced, and then printing the image of the Blue Willow plate onto paper, and using that as a placemat.

While my wedding placemats had to be printed 1 colour, and we had to cut out each one individually, I later decided to develop the idea into an actual product to sell under my brand, Handmade By Me. We printed the design full colour and laminated each placemat so that they could simply be wiped and reused again. The placemats were then packaged into sets of 4 and included a label and plastic packaging.

The 4 original designs were the Delft, Imari, Pretty Proteas and Fly Away Birds. And since then we have swopped out the Pretty Proteas and Fly Away Birds Birds for some newer designs in our range. The designs over the years have included Geometric Monochrome, Minty Green Mosaic, Feisty Floral Watercolour in Green and in Blue, and more recently the Birds of Paradise and Victoriana.

We also created a range of placemats for kids which we called our Big 5 placemats (which turn into face masks). Each set consisted of 5 placemats (1 of each of the Big 5 animals) which were each laminated for re-use, and they had the added benefit/novelty of being able to be turned into fun animal face masks.