One More Thing

Pamela Lee
by Pamela Lee
I was finishing decorating my front porch this morning. I took a picture of it and was shocked-my front porch had a naked floor! Ugh. It needed help. So, I began thinking of an inexpensive way to fix this naked floor.
I remembered that I had an outdoor rug in my garage that I was saving to redo next spring. "But I need something now," I thought. Just then, lightning struck⚡️⚡️⚡️. Ouch. Yes. Yes. I have all the stuff I need to make my own. I began by measuring the dimensions I wanted. Then I grabbed the rug out of storage and cut the rug to the right size.
I knew I wanted a border to define it a bit. So, using painters tape I eyeballed where I wanted the edges to be.
Then I mixed acrylic paints to the right shade of red that I wanted (thinning it with water to be the right consistency). I also cut a couple of inches off an old paint brush to make it more like a stenciling brush.
I began brushing or dabbing the thinned-down paint inside the tape, dragging the brush to the center of the border. I didn't want too much paint on the edges.
This is how it looked with the tape still on.
While the red paint was drying, I went to cut the stencil for my leaves. Using stencil plastic sheeting, I traced a maple leaf from a decoration in my house. I cut it out, being careful to leave a good sized border for me to hold down while stenciling. Then I mixed the paint palette I desired for my swirling leaves.
Just like the border, I painted or dabbed the autumn palette, making sure to get a bit of all the lovely colors.
I pulled off the painters tape and made sure that even the border had some leaves dabbled onto it.
I made sure the leaves were in every direction, even overlapping each other. This is how it turned out. I believe I will head to the Home Depot for an exterior finish for my rug. Can't believe how great it turned out. Now, I have no more nakey floors.
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  • Nance Freeman Nance Freeman on May 08, 2016
    What is your rug made of? I really want to make one for my front porch also.
  • Jt73620377 Jt73620377 on Jul 09, 2016
    I just had an epiphany! Couldn't you do the same thing with the opposite side of an old area rug that had run it's course by doing the same as you described whereby costing you ZERO $s in lieu of buy an inexpensive rug from Wal-Mart, Target, etc.?
  • Dar32153167 Dar32153167 on Apr 17, 2020

    What is the finishing/ seal you were going to use?

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