Digital craft: Party napkins

Will you use cloth napkins or paper napkins at your holiday party? It's a tough choice when you weigh practicality, durability and price. If you're going for elegance, cloth is a must. The cost, however, doesn't have to be prohibitive. Purchase basic cotton napkins and embellish them with your own design. Not only will you elevate you party from dollar-store décor to sophisticated setting, but you'll more than likely give your guests something to talk about -- besides your delicious feast, of course.

Materials
Cloth napkins
T-shirt transfer paper
Iron with no-steam setting
Scissors or utility knife

Step 1: Select the design
The image used to embellish your napkins can be anything from a funky piece of clip art or a beautiful photograph to an original design. If you choose one of the first two options, scroll to Step 3.

Step 2: Create the design
Simple is important when time is precious, but holiday parties are all about fun. A basic square with a straightforward seasonal message, "Eat, drink and be merry," in eye-catching colours is the answer.
• In your photo-editing program, open four new documents, insert a text box in each, and type one line of the four-line script.
• Highlight the word or words and select a font. We chose Engravers MT, Mistral, Gill Sans MT and Ravie.
• Flatten each document, then crop the canvas to the text.
• Open a new document and insert a square, sized to your napkin.
• Copy each line of text and paste it into the square. Elongate, truncate, stretch or shorten the wording by pulling on the image's corner to make each line fit into your square.
• Add colour to the box and each line of text through your effects toolbar or dropdown menu. To create different colour schemes, flatten the image, copy and paste it into a new document, undo the flattening on the original document and replace colours.

Step 3: Print the design
• If your image has text, as our original design does, horizontally flip the image so it will read properly when ironed.
• Test-print your design on regular paper to make sure the colour and size are correct.
• Insert your T-shirt transfer paper into your printer according to the instructions, select "specialty paper" and high or best quality in your printer settings.

Step 4: Transfer the design
• Trim the paper as close to the design as possible.
• Turn the iron to the hottest setting for your fabric, but keep the steam option off.
• Iron the napkin to eliminate any wrinkles.
• Apply the transfer paper face down and iron firmly in a circular motion. Check package instructions for the amount of time your image size needs to be ironed.
• When the paper has cooled, peel off the backing.

Set the napkins on your buffet table or wrap a set of four with ribbon and give as a hostess gift.