Hey y’all! It’s Heather, the owner of HauteMonoShop. I love a good personalized gift and as you can imagine I have given my fair share of monogrammed tumblers and t-shirts. So I thought I would try something a little different. I decided to make my own door mat. Follow along!

What you need:

• Blank Coir Door Mat ( I used this one from Ikea )
• Craftables Adhesive Vinyl
• Craftables Clear Vinyl Transfer Tape
• Outdoor Acrylic Paint (I used Folk Art in Licorice)
• Poly-Sponge Brush
• Weeding Hook
• Packing Tape
• Paper Plate (something to put your paint on)
• Iron
• Teflon Sheet

STEP 1

Click on the text tool and type. I wanted my mat to say “welcome yall” but you can type anything. ​​​​​​ Highlight the text and pick a font. TIP: I would suggest not using an intricate font. ​​​​​​

Right click on the highlighted text and select ungroup. This should break down the word so that you can select each individual letter or character.

Highlight each word, right click and choose group. This will allow you to move the words without messing up the alignment. TIP: Make sure you select everything when you group it, including dots and punctuation!

Step 2

Move the words around so they are formatted and look not super spaced out. I chose to left justify both of the words so that they were lined up on the side of my mat. If using a script font, make sure to weld so that the font is connected.

I thought it looked kind of plain with just the font, so I decided to add a heart to it. I googled a heart image and found one I liked. After saving it to the downloads folder, I opened Studio. Under the file tool bar, select library, then upload to library. Select the heart and click select. It is now in the library. Find it in the library and double click the heart to add it to the project.

Step 3

Now the heart needs to be traced, in order to cut properly. Open the Trace Panel by clicking the trace icon on the right hand side. Click Select Trace Area, then click and drag to highlight the heart. Once highlighted, click on Trace and you will see a red outline of the heart. Copy and paste this onto your project and place it next to the text.

Step 4

Expand the size of the text box and image by highlighting the project and dragging the box. I made mine 11.5 inches long.

Load the vinyl and cut mat into the cutting machine. Make sure the cut settings are set appropriately. I used: Blade – 2, Speed – 5, Force – 7, Passes – 1. TIP: Use a color of vinyl that contrasts with the color of paint you use. This makes it easier to see what has been covered with paint and what hasn’t.

Step 5

After the design has been cut, remove the vinyl from the cut mat and reverse weed your design using the vinyl weeding hook. Reverse weeding means removing the opposite what you would usually remove. In this case, you will remove the actual letters, and keep everything else. Keep in mind this is a stencil!

Step 6

Place the vinyl stencil and transfer tape onto the mat. I liked the look of the words being off-center, so I placed mine on the left hand center of the mat. The stiff coir makes it difficult for the vinyl to stick, so press down hard on the stencil.

Slowly remove the transfer tape from the vinyl stencil, leaving the stencil on the mat. WARNING: This is definitely the most tedious (read: frustrating) part of the whole project! I found it was easiest to pull the transfer tape so that it is parallel to the mat and placed my hands where the transfer tape met the vinyl. The small pieces of the stencil that didn’t come up from the transfer tape I had to pull apart using my fingers. TIP: Using packing tape, I placed a strip on the first portion of the stencil, after I removed it from the transfer tape. This helped hold the vinyl down to the mat. Just make sure not to tape over the actual cut outs of the stencil.

Step 7

After removing the transfer tape, place the parchment paper over your stencil and iron for 10-15 seconds using the lowest setting on your iron. This helps melt the vinyl a bit and secure it to the mat.

Step 8

Squeeze some paint onto the paper plate and begin dabbing the paint onto the stencil using the poly-sponge brush. Make sure to use a straight up and down dabbing motion to prevent any bleeding under the stencil. TIP: Because of the coarseness of the mat, I found it worked best to use a generous heaping of paint. You will see some of the natural color of the mat stick through, but that is okay, just cover it as much as you can.

Step 9

After you have covered your stencil once, let it dry for 15 minutes, then do another coat. It takes a lot of paint to sufficiently cover the stencil. I used a whole bottle of paint on mine. Let the second coat dry for 15-20 minutes.

Step 10

IT’S TIME FOR THE BIG REVEAL! Slowly pull your stencil and tape away from the mat. Try to pull it so that any wet paint on the vinyl stencil doesn’t rub on the mat. Using your weeding hook, pull off any smaller pieces of the stencil.

VOILA! You have your own custom door mat! Place it on your front door step and let your family and friends admire your work!

Step 11

Overall, I am OBSESSED with how mine turned out! I couldn’t wait to put it out and show it off! I even have friends asking me to make one for them.

When I try it again I think I will try a couple of things differently:

• I will ditch the transfer tape and take the stencil straight from the backing paper to the mat. This may be a little difficult if you are using an intricate font or small details. That leads me to my next point…
• I definitely will stay away from the intricate details and fonts. The font I picked was thick and fairly basic, which made it pretty easy to use.
• I will add more blank vinyl around the words so that I don’t have to be so cautious when painting. I think 1-2 inches around the words would be sufficient.

I would love to see how yours turn out! Find me on Instagram! @HauteMonoShop