DIY Painted Outdoor Rug

After months of perusing Pinterest and seeing thousands of super crafty Do It Yourself projects, I found something that not just looked easy enough for me to do it but was perfect since my hubby vetoed my buying the outdoor rug I wanted (I know, I know... $175+ is too much to spend on a rug the is going to sit under a patio dining set). After seeing a pin for a painted foam kitchen mat, I figured I could find some type of instructions for doing an outdoor rug as well. I gathered tons of ideas and tips, then got to work!

Here is what you will need:

• A rug- I got this one for $18 at  Home Depot!
•  A Stencil - The most expensive part actually at $40, I chose the Marrakesh Trellis design from Cutting Edge Stencils
• Acrylic craft paint  - I found an 8oz bottle at Michael's for $0.98
• 1" Stencil brush - $2 at Hobby Lobby
• Chalk (just for marking measurements to do the borders...not a necessity though)
• Painters tape - We had some laying around the garage so it was free!

The first, and for me the hardest part, was figuring out how wide I wanted the borders and how far the the edge of the rug I wanted to start them. I wound up putting down one strip of the 1.88 inch painters tape along the edge of the rug. Then I measured 2.5 inches in from the edge of the tape and marked it with the kid's sidewalk chalk (never been so glad to have that lying around...or that my cousin so ingeniously asked me if I had chalk!).

 After I had the measurements around the entire rug, I lined up another strip of tape along my chalk marks. I used the stencil brush (after using it, I completely understand why the recommend using it instead of any other type) to fill in the border. I figured out pretty quickly that painting with circular motions helped to get the paint down into the carpet fibers without adding too much paint to one spot. After letting it dry for about a half hour (it wasn't dry, just not as wet), I let my 7 year old peel off the tape. I got out that incredibly handy tape measure and determined where the exact center of the rug was so I could start the stencil. I figured if I started in the middle it would be easier to line up the designs as I started to stencil the other sides. Here is what it looked like that that point:

After 6 days of waiting for the rug to arrive at my house, hours of looking through stencils, a trip out to the arts and crafts store for supplies, roughly 3 hours of actual work and a phone call to my fav relative for her expert opinion on a couple of details.....Taadaa!!!

Here is another pic of the finished product actually serving its purpose it all of its $61 splendor!

All in all it was a fun easy project that wound up being way easier than I thought it would be! The best part is that I can use the stencil to paint my (and the hubby's of course) room AND if I want to do this rug for anyone else it would only cost $19 TOTAL since I have all of the supplies!!! SCORE!

Hope this helps if anyone out there decides to take on this little endeavour!

Ashley