Stenciled Door Mat

Hello everyone! How’s it going out there in blogland? Yesterday was a great day: beautiful sunny weather and we celebrated hubby’s birthday – 27 years old! It’s so crazy how time flies. I met him when he was 22 and it’s so amazing to see how he’s gone from a college student to a man that I share my life and home with. He is simply amazing!

{one of my fave photo compilations I took of him 😉 }

And here’s a couple photos of him/us from yesterday! We went out to Happy Hour at Emory’s and took a stroll around the lake before heading home for homemade smoothies and episodes of The Blacklist 🙂

I love coming home with hubby after a fun evening out and over the past couple weeks have decided that I want to spruce up the area round my front door more. Gotta boost that curb appeal! I had already added my Front Door Monogram, but I wanted something more. The previous house owners left behind an old coir jute door mat and I thought it was the perfect candidate for a new project! I forgot to take a before picture (bad, bad blogger) but it basically looked like this:

Booooorringgggg. So I decided to step it up a notch by making and applying my own stencils to give it a breath of new life. Take a look at the tutorial below to see how I did it!

Stenciled Door Mat Materials

– Door Mat (not pictured)

– Cardstock

– Printer or Pencils and Sharpies

– Craft/Utility Knife

– Spray Paint (not pictured)

Step 1

If you have a printer, I highly recommend printing out a design you would like to have on your mat. I, on the other hand, have a printer that has been out of ink for the past month (and I’ve been too lazy to do anything about it) so freehanding, it is. Use some thick cardstock to give your stencil extra stability. If you can’t find anything you like to print out, or have a defunct printer like myself, I suggest drawing out your design in pencil first and then going over it in sharpie so you can see your lines nice and clear.

Step 2

Take your craft or utility knife and carefully cut on the lines you just made. Cut the smaller pieces first (like the leaves in my olive branch) so that your paper will be stable enough – if you cut out the big chunks first, the paper’s integrity weakens and it might be harder to cut fiddly bits at that point, if that makes sense.

II also cut out an ‘S’ for my design!

Step 3

Head to a well ventilated area and lay out your stencil on top of your mat. This is where it gets a bit tricky. The coir/jute texture of the rug makes it hard for the stencil to lay flat, so I carefully layed some rocks down to have the stencil be more flush with the mat. If you have a spray adehsive, that might work, but don’t quote me on that. Take your spray paint and carefully spray over your stencil at a 90 degree angle to avoid spraying under the stencil edges. Remove the stencil immediately and spray any other stencils you want onto your mat!

Here’s the finished product!

I think it turned out pretty good for doing this on the fly! To get the reversed olive branch I just flipped my stencil over (once the paint was dry) and laid it down on it’s opposite side and sprayed again. Getting crisp lines on a coir rug is difficult, but overall the effect is pleasing! Definitely an improvement to what it was before and it was free! You can never beat free.

It goes nicely with my Front Door Monogram Hanger, don’t you think? 🙂

What are some of your favorite things to add to bump up your front door curb appeal?