DIY Hand Painted Wooden Spoons {Or how I made a whole bunch, heaps, tonnes, lots as party favours!}

So you would have seen pics from my launch (see all about the launch here and you can buy the book here) by now and the cute wooden spoons I gave as party favours. I funded my own book launch and I really wanted a decent party favor. The best I could afford was 3 heart shaped, foil wrapped chocolates in an organza bag, which didn’t really speak to me! This is what I did instead.

After making all that bunting, I swore I wouldn’t do anymore large scale crafting but then I went and painted 72 wooden spoons! The bunting post has been popular and I think that’s because I give costings for materials as well as how much time (and how many people) each step took. So I will break this down the same way for you. I think these are fabulous as party or wedding favours! There is more time than cost in them but they are pretty reasonable if you want to give something of value to lots of people. Plus how freakin’ cute are they! You can see my break down below but let’s call it $2.38 per favour. And now I have heaps of painters tape, some paints and shellac for another day, about 1/2 of both  paint and shellac, so that will reduce the cost of future crafting. If we were to shave off that cost, we’d be talking $1.92 per favour. If you didn’t buy everything online (ahh the pain of shipping costs) and maybe had less paint colours, you could probably get these down to about $1.40 ish. I guess I’m an Australian buying things less stocked here but our close connection to Asia keeps the spoon prices down, if you were American, the spoons may cost more but the supplies would be waaaay cheaper.

So I started with 72 wooden spoons (bought for $72 plus $19.95 shipping from this restaurant supply), Martha Stewart Satin Craft paint (sea glass, blue sky, pool & pond) it’s not easy to find in Australia but I found it here I paid $15.96 for the four paints plus $9.95 shipping. A pack of 6 sponge brushes and pack of mini plastic bowls from my local cheapy shop (maybe $4-6). Some painters tape $9.95 from local hardware and spray shellac ($24.95 plus $8.95 shipping) from this online hardware and a plastic party tablecloth ($3.75 from local party shop) as a drop cloth. Oh and Mummy Ask wore disposable plastic gloves, I wore some dishwashing rubber gloves, there were a few dust masks and a couple of old face washers (all on hand around our houses). You might also need some boxes and some kind of weights, we used the little boxes the spoons came in, a few wine boxes and some old balloon weights (also, just around and free).

Martha Stewart paints are pretty food safe, looked pretty after one coat and dry quickly. I think you might need two coats with other paints, so I would strongly recommend using them if you have a lot to do. Not sponsored, I just really liked them and they made this project easier. After much research, the shellac I used is perfectly food safe and fine for this use. Several coats will give you high shine (though will add a golden colour) but the once over I did will seal them and make them fully food safe. My research says they will wash well and can be dish washed on the top shelf. That said, I do not recommend dish washing wooden utensils, in general.

First we covered the kitchen island in the plastic tablecloth, no need to paint the kitchen! Next, we put a balloon weight in each of the little boxes and taped the flaps so that the spoons had somewhere to rest while the dried. We worked in ‘sets’ of 18 spoons (72 spoons, divide by four paints, equals sets of 18). For each 18 – tape them, paint them, dry then, and repeat with the next set. We taped off each spoon with painters tape, leaving a little folded over tab for easy removal, we just eyeballed where the tape needed to go. We squeezed some of the lightest paint into a plastic bowl and painted a spoon each, using the sponge brushes. Then you have try and get them to stand up in the holder you made! We finished the set and put them in the sun for 30mins to dry.

We threw the paint bowl out and washed out the brushes. We really squished the water out of the sponge things with paper towel and took advantage of the sunny day to dry them. We used a fresh set of sponge paint brush things to paint the next colour (the next darkest one). We kept washing and reusing those brushes and now we are done, we still have them for something else. I loved the little plastic bowls! Mummy Ask is always scared of these messy projects and it made things clean and easy.

Since we needed the boxes back for the next set, we laid the painted ones on baking paper and left them drying in the sun. We kept repeating until all 72 were done. We were pretty efficient, so that took about 3 or 3 1/2 hours. We brought them in and carefully laid them on the plastic tablecloth to cure for 24 hours. We left the painters tape on for shellacking. If you need a break, you can store these in a box until you are ready to shellac, which we did.

The shellacking was a breeze once we got a production line going! Mummy Ask had tossed those little boxes, so this time we cut slits into a regular box, which worked fine. I pinned my hair up, put on dishwashing gloves and donned a sexy dust mask. I wrapped an old face washer over the unpainted part of the spoon, covering about half the painters tape and sprayed the shellac on (you don’t want the plain part to have over spray, that would look odd!). I sprayed into a box, which did contain the over spray well. Mum would take the shellacked spoon, pass me the next one and place the wet one in the box to dry. We let that dry for 30 mins before bringing them in, removing the tape and setting them on the plastic tablecloth to cure. Rinse and repeat for the next 3 sets! Total time on this was also 3 or 3 1/2 hours.

Once they were all painted, shellacked and pretty, they needed gift tags. I bought my thank you tags on ebay from here and stamped the back with a custom stamp I had made.