Tailgating Football Field Tablecloth

Hey football fans!  It is football week here at Bees Times Three and I have another tailgating project to share with you today!  I made this football field inspired tablecloth for our tailgating party last weekend.  Check out the finished product in action:

This project is a little labor intensive, and I'm not going to lie, I will not make the disposable version again.  I do hope to make a more permanent, reusable version sometime soon!  For this project, you're going to need green butcher paper or a green plastic tablecloth, masking tape, white acrylic paint, a white paint pen, a ruler and a pencil.  Get ready to do some math :o(

I started by making the field stripes.  If you can find white tape, your life will be infinitely easier.  I didn't have time look for it, so I made my own with masking tape and white paint.  First, I covered my surface with wax paper and laid out the strips of tape.

Then I gave the strips of tape a couple of coats of white paint.  I actually like the texture the tape created because it ended up looking like chalk, but it was a long and tedious job laying out and painting all those strips.  Pre-made white tape would be much easier!

While the paint was drying, I laid out the green paper and did the measuring.  I made each end zone about five inches, and then spaced out the lines so they were about three and a half inches apart.  That covered the length of my six foot table.  Make sure you have the correct number of lines (I used a picture of a football field to make sure I was putting everything in the right place).  I marked the lines on the green paper with my pencil...

Then placed the tape over the markings.  The paint dried a little funky on the edge of the tape, but again, makes it look a little more like the real lines on a field.

Once you have all your lines on the green paper, add in the numbers, making sure you skip a line in between each one.  The numbers need to go on both sides of the tablecloth.

Here is is with all the numbers done...

When I do the one that will be for real, I will do a couple of things differently.  One, I will probably use fabric instead of paper, and ribbon instead of tape for the lines.  Then I will cover the whole thing with clear contact paper so it is easy to wipe and clean off the messes.  This guy was ruined about .5 seconds into our tailgating party, so it was definitely not built to last.  But it was cute for our party, and that makes it all worth it!