painting the (rug)

For my birthday, I asked for a rug. I didn't want just any rug. I wanted one that was flat-woven, not patterned, and neutral-colored. Why so boring? I wanted to paint it! I saw it first here and loved it. So my parents got me an Ikea gift card and this weekend I happily traipsed my way through the store looking for the perfect rug. I picked one out, took it home, and immediately started taping it up for painting. Let's be clear, I started taping this on Saturday and didn't finish taping until last night. The painting was easy. The taping was ridiculous. Here is a crappy phone photo that I took at night and was too lazy to focus. I used masking tape for the lines and mailing tape to cover the stripes I was leaving unpainted as well as the edges. Notice that I ran out of blue tape so I started using regular masking. And then I ran out of regular masking. And then I ran out of mailing tape, so I had to go buy three different rolls of tape to finish the job (and keep up my tape supply).

But even with all the crawling and measuring and marking and taping, when it was all dry and I peeled the tape off, man. I was in love.

I went with chevron stripes since the rug had a border. If it hadn't, I was going to go with horizontal stripes (which obviously would have been much easier, but pain=beauty). So for a $30 rug and a $3 sample size can of paint? Pretty good stuff.