Affix a piece of wire to the glue and build this effortless project

Dress up your dinner table without spreading out a bulky, bound-to-get-stained tablecloth or spending a ton of money and energy on buying and arranging flowers. Perk up your place settings with an elegant set of napkin rings.
This DIY has an autumnal theme because artificial leaves adorn the rings, but feel free to leave them plain, paint them any color of the rainbow, or throw on a bit of glue and glitter if you want to take a more festive approach. The way you customize your leaf napkin rings can also be informed by the prevailing colors of your napkins. Whether your end product is neutral and calming or colorful and energetic, your tabletop style will be upped exponentially!
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Materials
- Bag of plain wooden rings, 1¾ inches or 2 inches in diameter
- Craft paint
- Small bowl
- Small fine art paintbrush
- Pair of thick plastic gloves
- Bag of artificial fall leaves
- Small bottle of acrylic craft paint in gray
- Plastic paint palette
- Hot glue gun
- Glue sticks
- Several feet of thick wire
- Wire cutting tool
- Needle-nose pliers
- Spool of gray suede string
DIY Everywhere
Instructions
1. Place a napkin ring on your work surface, and pour some paint into the small bowl.
2. Put on the plastic gloves.
3. Using the small brush, put a coat of paint on the napkin ring.
4. Allow the paint to dry.
5. Remove the gloves.
6. Put the ring aside, and place one of the artificial leaves on the work surface.
7. Pour some gray paint into the paint palette.
8. Put the gloves back on.
9. Coat one side of two of the artificial leaves with the gray paint.
10. Remove the gloves, and allow the paint to dry.
11. Turn one of the leaves over so its uncoated side is facing up.
12. Cut a 2-inch piece of wire with the wire cutter.
13. Apply a thin line of glue to the back center portion of the leaf, and affix the piece of wire to it. About 1/3 of the wire piece should be glued to the back of the leaf, and the rest of it should extend from the leaf's bottom edge, like a stem.
14. Apply a line of glue over the section of wire that’s glued to the back of the leaf.
15. Place the back side of the other painted leaf on top of the glue, and apply pressure, so the two leaves are glued together and the wire is between them.
16. Get the napkin ring, and wrap the wire that extends from the two-layer leaf around the ring. Use a needle-nose pliers to bend the wire if necessary.
17. Cut three pieces of suede string with the cutting tool. Each should be about 6 inches long.
18. Apply a drop of glue to the middle point of the ring, below the leaf and to the right of it. Glue the end of one of the lengths of string to the ring.
19. Slowly start wrapping the string around the wooden ring, but apply a small bit of glue as you go every 1/2 inch or so, making sure it’s securely affixed. Wrap the string around the ring four or five times, trim the end of the string, and glue the other string end onto the ring.
20. Repeat steps 18-19, but wrap the string on the other side of the ring, directly across from where you wound the first piece.
21. Apply a drop of glue to the back side of the ring top, directly under the right side of the attached leaf.
22. Take the third length of string, and affix one end of it to the glued spot.
23. Wrap the string around the ring, but cross it over so it’s wrapped around either side of the wire that the leaf is attached to on the ring. Continue wrapping the string in a crisscross pattern, so it forms an X pattern on the ring, in front of and behind the leaf.
24. Glue the other end of the string to the back of the ring.
25. Trim any excess string with the cutting tool.
26. Allow the glue to dry.
27. Make four, six or more of these napkin rings, then roll up your favorite napkins and place them through the rings. Enjoy your table’s new star attraction!
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