Didn't Love It, Then I Did

The new rug is finally finished! No, this is not it. This is the old rug. After about two years of daily abuse, it officially gave up the ghost. In its defense, I completely quit cleaning it when I decided to make a new one. The first week of December. Don't judge me. I mean, I did still sweep under the table, but whatever. It actually lasted quite well for a cheap canvas drop cloth in a very high traffic area. And it totally fulfilled its purpose of protecting the wood floor while looking cute and remaining easy to clean. The biggest problem was that the edges started to roll a few months ago when the rug tape began to loose its stickiness. And then somehow one of the edges ripped. I think it had to do with a boy child that lives here.

Man, did I love that rug.

The portion of the new-rug-creating-process that took the longest was simply my complete indecisiveness as to what design I wanted. I get it from my mom, I'm telling you. As I said a few posts back, there are so many fun patterns and ideas to choose from. The one thing I knew for sure was that this time around I wanted a brighter color. After hemming and hawing and lots of going back and forth I just kept coming back to not-too fat, not-too-thin diagonal stripes. I had a vision in my head. It was beautiful. So I started with a $10-ish painter's canvas drop cloth from Walmart. I laid it on a piece of plastic in the hideous basement and rolled on a good layer of white paint until it really covered and soaked in. I suppose you could iron out the wrinkles but I'm weird and I like the texture they give the rug. Plus the paint smooths it out some.

Then I changed from my original idea of wider stripes to tape-sized stripes. It just seemed way easier. And sometimes when I'm making something for myself, I'm just plain lazy.
Painted over the tape. And...Disaster. And ugliness. Even if it hadn't bled like crazy I still would have hated it. Like really, really hated it. Laziness never really seems to pay off. Luckily, after the tantrum has been thrown, paint can always be fixed with more paint.

So back to the drawing board. I came across this wall paper from Ballard. I wanted this to be my rug exactly. It would be awesome, right? But I already had a totally (by this point) blue rug and again with the laziness. I know, I know.



So instead, I made a pattern and traced the shape randomly instead of in an entire trellis pattern. I also got some inspiration from this room by Kristen F. Davis Designs

Just scroll through her home tour until you see her bedroom. I loved it!

I painted in the pattern and topped it off with two good coats of polycrylic. I can already tell the difference between my first attempt at a canvas rug and this one. The current rug has about three times as much paint and twice the poly. It seems a lot heavier duty and is easier to wipe.
So laziness, it would seem, turned out to be quite fortuitous and not all that lazy after all those coats of paint:)

I'm sure you could attach a rug pad to this, but I just lay it down as is with some rug tape (again from Walmart) to keep it in place and keep the edges from rolling.

I kind of think its pretty fantastic.

Plus, remember, its super easy to sweep and mop!

And maybe sometime soon I'll get the table put back and looking cute for some pictures of how the rug was actually meant to be used. But for now I have a sick baby who just woke up and wants her momma to hold her.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!