Back-to-School Teacher Gift: Potato-Stamped Bilingual Art Tea Towels

My son starts kindergarten this year! We received a letter from his teacher  excited to welcome him to class and his face lit up!

He immediately wanted to write back with a picture much like what he does with his snail mail pal but instead I told him how about we make her something super special.

We came up with these cute potato stamped bilingual art tea towels. Each stamp means something to my son. The apple is his favorite fruit. The ABC stamp shows he knows his alphabet and the Hola is to share with his teacher that he is bilingual.  He can’t wait to hand it over to his new teacher.

To make some bilingual Art Tea Towels too here is what you’ll need:

1-Brown paper bag- to cover your area and use for pain mixing

2-Fabric Medium to mix with paint

3-Acrylic paint in your favorite colors

4-potatoes you can carve 2 stamps out of 1 potato

5-a napkin or tea towel to use as your canvas

6-Knife, Carving tools* and paint brushes. (dull pencils, wooden craft sticks, craft knife, piercing tool, etc.)

* parents, please help children with the carving and always handle carving tools with caution.

Cut potato in half and start carving your shape. Use a dull pencil to trace or sketch your image on potato.

 Continue cutting potatoes and carving until you have created all the shapes you would like to use.

If you are carving words, there are two ways to do so — you can carve directly into the potato and not shave any thing surround letters or you can create actual letters be sure to shave down at least half an inch.

Also, all words must be spelled and written backwards.  It helps to write it out first, write out again backwards, and then carve.

 Mix your paints with medium. For every quarter size blob of pain add 3-4 drops of medium you want your paint to be thinner but not runny.

 Apply paint onto the potato stamp and have your kids go wild!

We only stamped once for every time we applied paint. If you want a washed look you can definitely get two stamps out of one application of paint.

 Let them dry. All done!

Fold and attach a cute note with some ribbon for your child’s teacher!

Greet this year’s teacher with a big ¡HOLA! May your kids have a great school year!