I am really excited to share this post with you! Back in the spring, I helped my friend Katie pack up her apartment to get ready to move to Boston. As she was deciding what to keep and trash, she had this HUGE rug rolled up against the wall and said she was getting rid of it. WHAT?!? I just KNEW I could repurpose it somehow and use it in my classroom & she let me take it for free! (THANKS KATIE!) Our building has hard tile floors instead of carpet and I have a couple rugs that don't fit all of my 5th graders.
So...the designing began. I got on Pinterest and pinned a bunch of tutorials of how to paint a rug and ended up meshing several of them together into my own idea. I started by rolling out the rug in the garage to see what I was working with.
At first, I was thinking I would prime the entire rug and then create my own design with painters tape but after rolling it out, the different colors are actually a variety of carpet types so it would look really weird if it was all primed and reconfigured. I decided to keep the same design and drew it on a piece of paper and chose my colors. I looked at all the shades in the original rug and tried to stick to the same pattern.
Then I headed to Home Depot. I couldn't find any specific fabric paint and instead of mixing up colors and using brushes, I found these awesome spray paint colors! They are also paint & primer in one, (hopefully) eliminating the fact that I had to prime the rug before spraying.
Just a fun fact about me & DIY projects: Once I have an idea and the materials, I can't stop thinking about it until I get started and sometimes even finish (no matter what time it is!) Of course I just HAD to try out the spray paint to see what it would look like & to see if I had to prime first. Note to self: don't start at 9 PM with the garage closed. Whoops. I quickly opened the garage door and turned on a fan to help ventilate. The house STUNK so bad and I didn't even do that much! We slept with the garage door cracked to help eliminate the smell.
I used my marker-colored grid like a paint by numbers chart.
So here's how the sample section looked after an hour:
Pretty cool right? I didn't even use painters tape, just sprayed very carefully at the edges.
So, the next super sunny & hot day, I dragged out the rug and went to town. I ended up going back to Home Depot 2 times to get more spray paint, black Sharpie paint markers and a clear spray to finish it up! I added a red spray at the last minute as well. I absolutely LOVE it! I used the Sharpie paint markers to add a border line between colors.
13 cans of spray paint, 2 black Sharpie paint pens, and 2 cans of clear spray later:
The final repurposed project is DONE! I can't wait to add this to my crazy colorful classroom!
Another summer project I finished up was our Shutterfly Photo Book of our 2013 Florida adventures. Since we moved, I have documented EVERYTHING for our blog & I wanted to make a photo book for every year that we are here in FL. I had about 1/2 of the book finished and then school started last year...so I finally finished up 2013 and ordered our book - 40% off too!
So, Volume 1 is finished and on our coffee table and I am totally in love with it! I have started Volume 2 for 2014 already as well! I look forward to all the memories we can add to our books over the next few years!
Will YOU be a part of our photo books? COME VISIT and that'll be a yes!
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