Superhydrophobic surfaces with extremely low wettability have attracted attention globally along with their remarkable characteristics such as anti-icing, anti-sticking, and self-cleaning. In this study, a facile and cost-effective approach of fabricating patternable superhydrophobic surfaces, which can be applied on various substrates (including large area and 3D curvilinear substrates), is proposed with a salt-dissolution-assisted etching process. This novel proposal is environmentally benign (entirely water-based and fluorine-free process). The only required ingredients to realize superhydrophobic surfaces are commercially available salt particles, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), and water. No expensive equipment or complex process control is needed. The fabricated superhydrophobic surface shows high static contact angle (similar to 151 degrees) and a low sliding angle (similar to 60 degrees), which correspond to the standards of superhydrophobicity. This surface also shows corrosive liquids (acid/alkali)-resistant characteristics. Moreover, the self-cleaning ability of the fabricated surfaces is explored. As a proof-of-concept application of the present approach, the spatially controllable superhydrophobic patterns on flat/curvilinear substrates are directly drawn with a minimum feature size of 500 mu m without the use of expensive tooling, dies, or lithographic masks. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.