So my latest project has been inspired by the Chevron rug painting trend that has become pretty popular. Basically you take a flatwoven rug, stencil or measure and tape your zig-zag chevron lines, and paint!
I already had a $5 rug from Ross that I bought 5 months ago for the entryway. It's made of synthetic fibers, and most of the blogs I've read about painting rugs have used cotton or natural fiber rugs. I think cotton/natural fiber rugs take the paint better, whereas synthetic rugs tend to absorb a lot of paint and you have to do multiple layers. Anywho, I needed to practice painting a rug before I get started on another Chevron rug project with some nice natural-fiber rugs from target. So while I'm pretty content with the outcome, I hope it will look better on a flatwoven cotton/natural fiber rug!
Finished Chevron rug!
This is the natural-fiber rug from Target that I'll be painting eventually, which would be a great choice if you wanted to do this project! A 2.5' x 4' is $20, and I believe the 5' x 7' is $80. You can order both the small and large versions of this rug on the Target website (some companies, like Ikea, don't ship rugs) and because my order was over a certain amount and it was on flooring I received free shipping and a 15% discount! Score!
There's also a $70 4'4" x 6'5" EGEBY rug from Ikea that would work well here.
This one, ERSLEV from Ikea is even cheaper and larger at 5'11' x 8'2' and $60 (too bad it's out of stock at the VA Ikea), but maybe you could find it somewhere online! I've seen Chevron painted on both!
What you need (my quantities are for a 3' x 5' synthetic rug, so adjust as needed):
1) Flatwoven natural fiber/cotton rug (recommended)
2) Quart of base color (lighter colors look good!). Mine was Olympic "Ash Mist".
3) Quart (or two sample size) of line color. Mine was Valspar's "Frosty".
4) A cardstock template.
5) Painter's tape.
6) Roller, paint tray, foam brush, large brush.
7) You could also use a fabric medium to mix with your paint which you can get at craft stores (some instructions use it, some don't)
8)
So like I said, the rug I bought was $5 and isn't great quality, but I needed to practice. It was originally a beige color, but I wanted it to be more white, so I used Olympic's "Ash Mist". I got a sample size, which barely covered a quarter of the rug! This thing absorbed paint like crazy! I ended up having to by a $9 quart of Ash Mist to cover the entire thing and used a foam roller. Also, if you're using a rug with a boarder, don't forget to tape off the edges!
So I really didn't have a great method for my madness, except I created a template, which I didn't take a picture of, but you can see it in the far left of the picture below. It's cardstock that I glued together, end to end to get a zig-zag shape. You need 2 to measure the next place you need to tape. Because I suck at math and geometric measurements frustrate me, I guestimated the size, luckily for this 3' x 5' rug, my template (which was a piece of 8.5" x 11" of cardstock split down the middle) worked. I used my template to tape off one line at a time. Remember you always need to tape around the outside of your template when it is positioned one line up, or else your spacing will be off. OR you could always follow these directions I should have found earlier just found and roll the entire thing at once!
After letting the white paint dry, I used a foam brush to get the edges, and a paint brush for the insides of my lines. The color is "Frosty" by Valspar.
I had to get another sample jar to finish the lines. I should have just gotten a quart of "Frosty" and would have some left for another project! Oh, and for some reason the color came out a little lighter. Oh well. I'm hoping that it might darken when it dries completely.
Here's the finished project again!
So what I learned is it is a pain to paint this synthetic fiber type of rug. It's not really flatwoven as there are little "hooks" of fibers, so getting in all the little nooks took a long time. It still looks a little "distressed" because it was absolutely impossible to get even, full coverage, but you know what...some people have sanded down their rugs to give them the distressed look mine has, so I don't mind it! I'll probably also try that "tape method for perfect chevron stripes" next time too.
I'm linking the following blogs that may provide better directions than mine some inspiration! You can also try out other neat painted designs, not just the Chevron stripe! Or use outdoor paint for an outdoor rug!
No comments:
Post a Comment