Rug Painting

I am no stranger to rug painting... a few years ago, I painted this flat-weave rug from Ikea, and blogged about it:

before: 

Taped it off:

spraypainted it:

and after I pulled the tape:

This rug was not a long-term solution for the perfect rug, BUT I will say it lasted just as long as one of those printed flat weave rugs from Urban Outfitters, and it was way, way, way cheaper. 

A couple years later, I tried my hand at rug dyeing:

I found this Oriental rug lookalike (really, it was much thinner than a real rug) at a thrift store, and decided to dye it for that "over dyed rug" look that is so popular. For the full story, you can read here what I did. 

Anyway, it looked like this to begin with:

After a little of this:

it looked like this!

(naturally, Mika models)

Soooo, recently when a client asked me to paint a rug for her, I had no problem saying yes. 

she bought this large 5x7' rug from Ikea, and told me she loved Christi Holcombe's rug she made for her son's nursery (which I'd seen too, and loved!)

My client was putting the rug in the nursery that her young daughter and her newborn son will share. She was using mostly gender neutral colors, but wanted to incorporate a pop of the bright pink into the rug, too. I loved that idea!

Here are my steps from the process: 

I used a roll of contact paper and placed it onto the end of the rug, from top to bottom. I’d drawn out my pattern on a piece of paper, so it was ready to trace onto the actual contact paper.

Then, I repeated the pattern all the way down the rug. It made about 4 and a quarter of the little medallion patterns, so when it came time to move my pattern over, I switched the placement of the paper to be upside down, so the pattern was “short” on the other end, which made a more even looking/intentional pattern.

I also realized early on that it would take 4 rows of my pattern to fill up the whole space, which was important to me.

Next, after I drew my pattern onto the contact paper with a permanent marker, I cut it out with a razor blade. Very easy! After that, I poured my paint in paint trays, and was ready to go.

I used foam furniture rollers to roll my paint on (the small ones!) and MyColor™ inspired by PANTONE®’s “Honeysuckle” (color of the year last year!) and “Raw Sienna” as the colors.

I rolled it on, but I did not let it completely fill the rug’s weave. I didn’t want it to get too “crunchy”, and I thought the fact that it didn’t fill the whole weave made it look more legitimate – almost like it was woven into the rug.

and, I was done!

I loved how it turned out, and you can't beat $40 for a fun, unique, custom, patterned rug!