Even More Rug Love

This morning I thought I'd put up the guest post that I did for Cassie at Primitive and Proper.  It's a fun one, with some reminiscing of past projects as well as an awesome new one.  Enjoy!

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Hi Primitive and Proper readers!  I'm super excited and flattered to be here today, thanks to Cassie, whose work I so admire! She's awesome, right?  

To begin, let me just start with a BIG disclaimer: I am in no way a professional designer, nor do I play one on the Internet.  There are so many ladies here in blogland with an amazing talent for creating amazing interiors.  Like, unreal talent. I am not in that league. But I do love furniture and paint.  I've taught myself to refinish furniture through trial and lots of error over the past 10 or so years and that is what I really love to do.  But that's not exactly what I'm posting about today.  Today I thought I'd write a little bit about painting rugs.

Maybe we're just crazy messy, but pretty rugs never last under our table.  I lamented the fact here.  Just, you know, 4 kids=gross mess mushed into the rug.  But I love the look of a rug under a table, plus- maybe its just us again-but I felt like we were scratching up our wood floor.  I know, chair pads.  Seriously, those never stick.  So I took the crafty blogger's best friend, the Fabulous Canvas Drop Cloth, and made a rug that was easy to sweep and easy to mop. Basically painted on my design and coated with poly.  Stick it to the floor with rug tape, and wha-lah.  Easy to walk on, easy to clean, easy on the eyes. 

Then I made this adorable flower rug for my even more adorable sister-in-law.

 In the beginning of this year, my first canvas rug gave up.  So I improved upon the design with more paint and way more poly to make it a little stronger and I think the quality is quite a bit better. 

I think it gives this area just the right amount of color.  You can read about my whole process for this rug here.

 Now enter the real challenge: I have this green shag number in my seldom used, seldom decorated Front Room.  Its in good shape, but I'm tired of the shag and over the dark color.  And I didn't want a shiny, waterproof rug there.  Although, around here anything wipe-able is usually best...  Also, it needed to be a little beefier than a drop cloth.

 I remembered I had the old stretched-out flat weave rug from, ironically enough, under the kitchen table, stashed in the basement.  It's a basic brown indoor/outdoor from Pier One via Big Lots.  I decided it would be my guinea pig.  I didn't want to spend any money on this experiment because I didn't know how it would turn out.  I used the back (pictured) because the weave was flatter than the top.

I coated it with some really old, gloopy paint I had left over that I could never use on anything else.  It sucked it up like a thirsty sailor and asked for more.  So I rolled on one more coat of $10/gallon white paint from Walmart.   With the lighter-weight canvas rugs, after the base coat I've used drapery clips to hang the drop cloth from nails pounded into studs in my basement and use our projector to trace a pattern-'cause I'm no free-hander. I planned to use the same technique to create a subtle zebra print in taupe.  But this was a huge, heavy rug to begin with and after it sucked up all that paint it was a monster.  So scratch hanging it from the studs.  So I decided to go with the crafty blogger's next best friend, Chevron.  I got out my trusty measuring stick and went to town with a pencil.  I measured the rug into thirds and then the added horizontal trace marks every 13 1/2 inches.  Then I used the measuring stick again to trace a diagonal line from each intersecting point.  Does that make sense?  The pencil marks in the picture are faint, but they're there. Go ahead click to make bigger.  Next I painted with the leftover paint from my new kitchen rug.  Didn't want to spend any $, remember?  I added some black to make it a little darker, although you can't see both rugs from the same spot anyway. 

It was a little shiny and rough, so I hand sanded it randomly.  Also, I stand by the fact

that sanding and distressing in all things hides a multitude of sins:)

And here it is!  A long way from perfect, but good enough :) I feel like it really lightens up the room. And makes me hate the ugly sofas just a little less.  As a side note I will say that this rug is a little rough, but not bad.  This area is super low traffic. I wouldn't put in our family room where we relax and spend a lot of time on the floor.  Also as a side note, remember I am no designer.  But imagine an awesome coffee table, badly needed reupholstered/slip covered sofas, lamps, sides tables, the works.  Its coming.

Thank you again so much Cassie!  Its been so fun!

Emily

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!

Jaci's Rug

My super cute sister-in-law Jaci knows a good thing when she sees it and wanted a canvas rug :) Just kidding. She agreed to become my guinea pig so I could try something new. Silly, brave girl! Her gorgeous black table is square, so a rectangular rug wasn't ideal. Plus in order to get the width to fit the table and chairs the length was too big for the space. This conundrum was actually a blessing in disguise because it forced us to to get a bigger canvas which we cut and hemmed to exactly fit the dining set in the room. Hello, can you say custom? Just kidding again:) And it created leftover canvas to make smaller coordinating rugs!! Jaci's kitchen has adorable red accents, so she wanted something that would compliment that. I wanted it to be a big, bold graphic that would be unique. So this flower is what we came up with. I can't take credit for the pattern, I took it from a piece of wrapping paper I've been saving that I just knew would come in handy someday...
I love it under the table, so Jaci, I hope you do too! And the best part, don't forget, it can be swept and mopped! Hallelujah! This would be awesome in other colors and it really got my mind spinning with possibilities for other patterns and graphics-what about one huge number or letter? Or a huge piece of damask? Or...

PS-Someone also hinted to me the other day that canvas rugs would also work really well on a deck or patio. What a great idea!

PPS-When shopping for a rug pad to attach to the bottom of this, I came across the coolest stuff-rug tape. It's tacky on both side and sticks your rug to any floor surface without damage. Its a very cool trick. Just so you know.

Canvas Rugs

Woo Hoo! A rug that can be swept and mopped! Seriously. I love rugs in general, especially the way a cute rug looks under a table. It defines the space and is a chance to add some more color, pattern and texture. However, after many years of living with a cute rug under the table where we do most of our eating, I have developed some issues. Such as my family tends to spill. A lot. The last rug I had was chocolate brown sisal. Very cute. But it had to be vacuumed to get the crumbs (yes, I am that lazy-I hate to pull out all of the chairs and vacuum everyday) and things like mashed potatoes were really good at getting ground in permanently. Plus it completely stretched out of shape. So I made a canvas rug for cheap cheap cheap. This turned out so great! I used a $10 9'x6' canvas drop cloth from Walmart and painted and sealed it with stuff I already had. It can be swept with a broom and spills can be wiped up with a damp cloth. And because I used a drop cloth it was even hemmed already! I really like the light colored stripes for spring and summer. The great thing about a rug like this is the possibilities are endless. Any color, any pattern would work. I've already been thinking about zebra stripes, diamonds, big graphic florals, random typography, damask, monograms...anything I could either tape off or trace:) And I definitely want to make a couple smaller, coordinating monogrammed ones for my kitchen sink area and maybe my laundry. This would also be a great solution for tables that must live on carpeted areas-I've had a house like that before -not really that fun.


Like it? Are you loving all the possibilities like me?