Monogram Rug

I found this picture of an entryway, last year in I think a special edition Better Homes and Gardens magazine (paging through while Sassy was in her gymnastics class):

Lucky for me that I had my camera with so I could take a picture of the picture (I'm sure no one though I was crazy)  since I couldn't steal it from the gymnastics center.

I loved the colors and all of the monograms, but I really loved the rug (and the pots ~ just might have to make those too☺).

and thought to myself, "EASY! I can do that!"

Now a year later, I am finally getting around to monogramming a rug!

Here's how I did it:

~ I purchased an inexpensive rug from Ikea ~ $7.99 to be exact (the website says $8.99, but I swear I only paid $7.99). 

~ Found a font from the computer that I liked and printed off a huge "C"  (my son says it stands for Christmas ☺).  Then I cut it out, outside of the line, to make it a bit bigger.
~ I decided to paint in my monogram and not spray paint around it as shown in the magazine.  I also decided to add a border.

At first I was going to make it like this one from Ballard Designs:

So I taped off my rug:

But, I decided I liked how it looked with the border in farther (like where the tape is) in, so I re-taped my rug:

I painted the border with red acrylic paint (same color I used to paint my chalkboard).  Since there was so much texture in the rug I did more of a pounding motion with my paintbrush as opposed to a sweeping motion.

When that part was painted, I traced my "C" in the center of the rug, then filled that in with paint.

Slowly peeled off the tape ~ praying for no bleeding ☺ and VOILA:

A beautiful monogrammed rug!

The next morning (since it was 11:30 and dark out) I sprayed the rug with a clear spray paint to seal it and help increase the durability.

Here's what it looks like outside in the entry:

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