1.17.2012

painting a rug

in clemson, south carolina, one of the fraternities paints large paw prints on the streets leading into campus. it is surprisingly difficult to find photos of this (although a few do exist), so I recommend a trip down there at some point to see them for yourself.
I thought it'd be cute, then, to do something similar to the floor in the nursery. after purchasing everything I needed, I realized it'd have been better to use a runner leading into the nursery, but I need a rug in the nursery, and one in the short hallway outside would have been superfluous, so this is where we're at.



after reading a few different bloggers' takes on the process ( this one was the most helpful), I bought a woven rug from ikea. since the wall paint is acrylic, I figured I might as well use the stuff we bought so that it would match. I put down plastic between the rug pad and the rug itself, not sure if it would bleed through or not (depending on the tightness of the weave). surprisingly little seeped through to even the backside of the rug!

I drew a stencil of the clemson paw and cut it out of cardboard. I actually used the cut out version, for 2 reasons:
1. I didn't have to worry about lining up the different pieces just right, as the outline had it already.
2. any extra marks I would make accidentally would lie inside the part I was planning to paint, and therefore would get covered up easily.

using a pencil (stupidly; I don't know WHY I didn't think to use one of those sewing pens that disappears in 24 hours) I traced my stencil. I used a foam brush to paint and it went rather quickly, even at 7 months pregnant (though I wouldn't do it much past that; I was exhausted at the end!)

the top is a little bit rough, so ryan wants me to take some sandpaper to it, as suggested by a few of the bloggers, but I haven't bothered yet, as it really isn't that bad. I will eventually though, which has the potential to require some touch ups.

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