chevron rug

paint a rug and make your bunny happy!!  when we originally moved into our apartment, which has linoleum floors, the bunnies had no where to hop.  they can't really get traction on the linoleum so they kinda just sat in one localized area.  so we got them a rug, a pretty plain (and somewhat ugly) brown jute rug from target, but it was cheap which was the important thing...cheapish anyway.  i had no idea how expensive rugs were...  anyway, i'd been really wanting to replace it and came across the idea of floor clothes.  basically a nicely decorated piece of cloth you put on your floor-just as the name describes.  and i figured i could just lay it over the existing rug so it would still have some traction/padding. 

 

it was surprising difficult to get grumbles to hold still even for a second for this photo...first i bribed him with carrot, but then he just pulled it from my hand and took it on a little victory lap (for some reason he's become very fond of victory laps...) around the rug before settling down on the very far edge with his rump towards me.  

first-the supplies:
-i made mine out of canvas drop cloth from city mill.  they come in 6 oz. or 8 oz, which are about $20 and $40 respectively (sorry i don't have the exact dimensions but i threw the package away already...).  i bought the 8 oz but only because they were out of the 6 oz at the time...  i made my rug 5'x8' and that was only half of the drop cloth so i think it might've originally been 12'x18'??

-paint-i originally bought 3 tubes of acrylic paint and once i got home i realized what a foolish mistake that was...i ended up using about 7 tubes of paint...which actually ended up being a pretty expensive part of this project.  in hind sight i probably should've just bought some mistinted paint it would've been way cheaper (i saw small cans at city mill for $6-8).

-stencil-i'm waay too lazy to tape off the chevron pattern on a 5'x8' rug so i was trying to think of different things i could use a stencil.  some other tutorials i read used vinyl but i had no idea where i could buy vinyl near where i live...so i went ghetto and used non-corrugated cardboard.  cardstock is a little too flimsy and corrugated cardboard makes it too difficult to paint.  just measure/cut your pattern out of the cardboard.  this method won't give you as clean or exact lines as taping would but unless you're face is inches away from the rug you won't really be able to tell. 

-brush-just any cheapo brush will do

-something to put your paint in (or you can just paint out of the can)

ignore the fact that the paint in the bowl doesn't match the paint in the tube...

canvas drop cloth tends to unravel pretty fast so i'd recommend hemming the edges as soon as you cut out your rug.  i actually painted the pattern first and then cut the rug out and hemmed the edges but  painting after would work just as well.  i painted one complete horizontal row at a time (versus making one v all the way down and repeating). 

 

 

not sure why but for some reason this photo is a different color than the rest...

this is my rug folded in thirds

and that's it-i painted half of my rug in a couple hours so it can be somewhat time consuming...but if you're doing something small like a door mat it shouldn't take very long at all.

and if you buy the the 6 oz. drop cloth and mistinted paint you should be able to make a rug for around $30.  and you'll probably have paint and a lot of canvas left over for other projects (for example i some of the scraps to make my bunny sachets).

this is a great project to cover up a rug you want to replace or just to change things up a little up.  they are really thin since it's just canvas so by itself it doesn't really have much substance but it is a great little cover up.