Easy Way to Make a Polka Dot Background

You have a tool close to hand for making polka dots and you’ve never thought of it — the cap of your lip balm.

I saw this post at the Brit + Co site about making favor bags and immediately thought about needlepoint canvas.

Circles and dots make delightful backgrounds but they are devilishly hard to make look good in needlepoint.

With this technique you could make the dots easily. If you didn’t like the look of open canvas you could stitch the background in several ways:

• add whipped backstitch around the dots
• shadow stitch the entire background
• Make a blackwork pattern over the dots so it looks as if you’re looking through something

The tutorial uses craft paints, and so can you. just be sure to thin down the paint and only to use a little paint on the cap.

You could also adapt this to make other sizes of dots by using bigger caps.