a heinous old rug gets shown who's boss

This nasty old thing is the rug that's been sitting under my dining room table for almost 5 years now. As you can see, it's positively DISGUSTING. It embarrasses me to no end. So what do I do when something embarasses me? Put it on the internet for the whole world to see, of course. Well, at least when it has a happy ending I do. I'll just take solice in the fact that I if I did a pop-in to your place right this second, I'm sure there would be something you would want to hide from me. Right? 'Fess up.

This 8'ish x 10'ish rug cost about $149 about 4/5 years ago when I bought it. It's just your classic jute rug, and it's been a good one. However in those 4+ years, it has been sitting under the high chairs of two little boys who were big fans of throwing their food. I just didn't want to spend the money on a brand new one while my youngest is still in said high chair. (Not to mention, he still loves to sweep the food off the tray using his forearm to signal that he is done eating. Nice.) So I've scrubbed it, vaccummed it, swept it, beaten it, shaken it...and it was about to face the curb. Until it dawned on me. I never *painted* it.

Having been inspired by some amazingly bold & graphic print rugs at stores like West Elm and CB2, I decided to pop over to Royal Design Studio and select a stencil so I could make a bold, graphic rug myself. The "Large Marakesh Trellis" stencil started screaming my name. Then I selected my color palette. That part was easy, since I bought some cushions for the dining room chairs a while back, and they have a gorgeous cream/olive/aqua thing going on. YUM. And since I am just loving using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint these days, I was excited to put it to the test on a project like this. The only medium I've used it on so far has been my furniture. I knew I would need to wash the entire rug in one base color (preferably dark, to maximize stain coverage, so therefore - the olive) while choosing another color for the part of the pattern that would be dominant once painted on.

My first step was doing a wash over the entire jute area in the color I selected as my base. I took some ASCP in Olive and added a dash of Antibes just for fun, and watered it down so that it would almost pour off my brush and into the cracks of the super textured jute, rather than "glob" on, like with typical paint viscosity. (A huge thanks to Dana at Shabby Chic Addiction for brainstorming this out with me and suggesting I use a wash when I said I was going to use a roller. That would have been a nightmare with jute. Dana, you rock!) You can see by the picture below that I wasn't worried about it being too perfect. I knew the Marakesh stencil I selected would only reveal a small amount of the olive, so I didn't bother with two coats.

I figured the corner was as good a place to start as any. I taped the stencil down so I wouldn't have any budging or complications, and then started dabbing away with my custom aqua color. (Mainly Louis Blue, some Provence, a dollop of Paris Grey.) I didn't wash this down, I used the typical paint thickness.

So I dabbed. And dabbed and dabbed and dabbed. And then I dabbed a little more. I liked it, but I decided it needed a little something extra. For those of you who follow Stellar Junk on Facebook, you *might* remember me complaining about my decision to handpaint white borders on 242 Moroccan "tiles"? Well, this was that project. If I was going to live with this in my house, I didn't want to walk past it every day and get annoyed that I didn't take the time to do it right and to ensure that I would love the finished product.

Two hours later, I was kicking myself. Two additional hours later, I was celebrating. I loved it and it was worth every last moment. I LOVE this rug. Two coats of Polycrylic sealer to finish things off, an overnight drying time and BAM, furniture on it in the morning. I couldn't wait.

Now, it's not perfect. You can see that I handpainted the white borders, but I don't mind that. If perfection's your bag, you probably won't even attempt painting a rug anyways. But I love how the white borders make the aqua pop. I think if I was doing it again, and I wanted to avoid the handpainting part, I would have chosen colors that were more drastically different from each other. Once I saw my color choices together, I just felt it "needed something."

Here it is in my dining room...

And here's a closer look at my awesome seat cushions that inspired the color palette:

                                                 

All in all, the rug has it's imperfections but I was happy to have extended the life of it and delayed the cost of buying a new rug. And I'm always down for a fun project that will give me something unique at the end. I was really impressed with the AS chalk paint (as usual) on the rug and I was thrilled with my Royal Design Studio stencil. I have another project I am going to tackle with it soon. Yay!

****a teensy disclaimer & some exciting news****
Royal Design Studios did send me a stencil to review on my blog. I was in no way obligated to write a positive review. But guess what else they're doing? Well, they *might* be sponsoring a little giveaway right here on my blog, so you guys can get your hands on one of their products for free! Stay tuned and I will post the details of this giveaway in a couple days.

Thanks everybody!