It is a ton (or I should say, a bushel) of fun to produce prints from produce!! You may have made projects like this when you were a kid. If so, this project takes the simple concept of using vegetables as printing stamps to a whole new level. And if you've never made them before, you're in for a treat.

We used to call them potato prints. You simply slice a potato in half, cut simple shapes into one of the flat, cut sides, dip them in paint and print away. Now, you can make more elaborate images and also, use other fruits and vegetables, such as citrus fruits, mushrooms, radishes and so on.

The vegetable theme lends itself to use on kitchen accessories, such as tea towels, napkins, etc. By using fabric paint, you can easily stamp on cloth just as you would on paper. But of course, you can use these, or any other images you come up with, to decorate wrapping paper, cards, gift or lunch bags. Try stamping on placemat-sized sheets of paper and then having the sheets laminated at the copy store, or stamp paper that you'll use to recover a boring lampshade.

What You Need

Raw potatoes, carrots, limes, mushrooms, as desired
Sharp knife
X-acto knife
Hors d'oeuvre cutters, vegetable or other shapes
Acrylic craft or fabric paints
Junky brushes
Plain cotton fabric (16" squares for napkins) or purchased light color napkins or tablecloth, curtains-or wood tray or other flat non-fabric item

What to Do:

To make potato prints in vegetable shapes:

Cut potato in half. Press hors d'oeuvre cutter almost all the way (1/4"+) into flat side of potato half. Leave cutter in place while you use a sharp knife to cut the edge of the potato away from the cutter. Cut down about 1/4 inch, then across to edge of cutter. Use knife to slice horizontally across potato, all around cutter. Discard scraps that you have cut off.

Remove cutter from potato half. Now you have a flat vegetable shape that is raised up from the surface of the potato. Use junky brush to apply a small amount of paint to the vegetable shape. Use two colors where indicated, such as a touch of green for the radish's stem, etc., and red for the radish itself. You will need to reapply paint to the stamp every other, or every, time you stamp it.

2. Stamp print on fabric. Be sure to test on scrap fabric first.

3. For best results, use several different vegetable shapes in different colors on each piece. If a stamp doesn't work quite right, use a small brush and a tiny bit of paint to correct the stamped fabric.

4. Let dry. Hem, by machine or hand, if required. Set paints according to directions on bottles.

Tip: For other images, create your own shapes by cutting the shape 1/4 inch into the cut flat side of the potato, then slicing away the excess around the shape as above. If you do letters, remember that they need to be backwards.

Citrus prints

Cut lemon, lime or orange (depending on how big you want your images to be) in half or quarters. Use junky brush to apply small amount of paint across surface. Stamp on fabric. As above, test on scrap first. It is fun to alternate the stamped halves and quarters. Then use the plain cut end of a carrot to print polka dots in between. Experiment with overlapping the citrus circles, waiting till the first has dried to print the second.

Mushroom, broccoli, strawberry prints

Proceed as above.

If you have any questions about this project, or any other project you've seen me demonstrate on 7News at Eleven, e-mail me at 11am@thedenverchannel.com.