This DIY Doormat was SUCH a fun project! I finished it just a few weeks ago and I thought I’d share before fall was over!
Fall makes me H A P P Y ! ! And I mean everything about it! I’m obsessed! Anything from a pumpkin patch, candy pumpkins, just to the colors black and orange since it’s associated with Halloween!
I. Love. Fall!
My love for fall probably is largely to do with the fact that my birthday is October 17th and my mom always threw fall themed birthday parties for me!
It’s always been my ABSOLUTE favorite time of year!
Lately, I’ve been OBSESSED with buffalo check fall front door mat trend! They come in the cutest designs! Some say “hello fall” or “happy fall”. Others say super cute things like “hey boo” or “hey there pumpkin”.
Being as into pumpkins as I am (my orange cat that we got in fall of 2011 is even named Pumpkin!) I definitely thought “hey there pumpkin” was the cutest thing ever!
After looking around for one that I liked, I couldn’t decide on an exact design and I thought “HEY! I could TOTALLY make this myself!
So, here it is!
I thought y’all would also like to know HOW I made this DIY doormat!
WHAT YOU’LL NEED
First of all, here’s what you’ll need to make this fall, “hey there pumpkin” DIY doormat.
Materials:
- Blank coir doormat
- Black paint
- Stick on vinyl
- Cricut (or someone with a cricut!)
- Clear spray paint or protective layer (Optional)
Here’s the blank coir doormat I found. I had looked at several stores such as Walmart and Target to try and find a blank doormat but had no luck.
Thank you Amazon!
The black paint I used was just normal, acrylic craft paint you can get for $.50 at walmart. I also grabbed some round sponge paint brushes that are good for “dabbing” paint onto weird materials.
A bit of a short side note and a bit of another DIY doormat I did in the past.
We have a doormat that has our monogram on it surrounded by a bunch of swirls and fleur-de-lis. I’m pretty sure we got it at Bed, Bath & Beyond back in the day.
It looks just like this.
We bought it for our old house when we first moved in back in April of 2013. (Read about the insane moving experience in my Personal Time Management post!)
The poor thing has seen better days. It’s a bit faded and has flattened quite a bit over the years.
A few years back I decided to try to “revive” the mat a bit by repainting the design on. I could still see where it had originally been (and I also looked up a picture for reference) so I was basically just dabbing a bit of paint over paint that was already there.
WOW! I can’t tell you what a night and day difference it made! The black craft paint made it look like I bought a new doormat! I was so impressed!
Since then, I’ve had to do it once more as that was a few years ago. Eventually, it may just be time to get another one. But for the meantime, I don’t mind helping it “limp along” a little longer!
Repainting our monogrammed doormat made me realize I could use the black craft paint to paint on a blank one with my own design as well.
THE DESIGN
As I said before, I had decided on the phrase “hey there pumpkin” for the DIY doormat.
I knew I wanted the word “pumpkin” to be the focal point and in the handwritten calligraphy style. For the “hey there”, I knew I wanted it to have a contrasting style and be smaller.
In my Cricut Design Space I found a font I liked for both and figured out how big the word “pumpkin” needed to be to fill the space of the doormat.
I’ll be honest. I didn’t measure the “hey there” as well as I should have. I envisioned the words smaller and off to the side but made them a little too big.
Once I saw how big they were, rather than remake them and waste the vinyl (and the time it took!) I just decided to go with it and put the words across the top.
Even though it turned out differently than I was originally pictured, I still think it turned out super cute!
THE STENCIL
So here comes the fun part…
Once I had made the design on the computer, I used the Cricut to make a stencil out of stick on vinyl.
The word Pumpkin was wider than the 12 inch vinyl pieces and cutting mat. Because of this, I broke up the word across two pieces of vinyl and just overlapped them on the doormat itself.
After the Cricut had done it’s “thang”, I weeded out the “negative” spaces and took the letters out of the design.
I have to say… it was a bit strange getting rid of the vinyl letters since that’s what I’m usually putting ON things!
Once the vinyl was all weeded and the stencil was made, it was time to place it on the doormat.
Here’s where things got rooooouggghhhh…
Every time I would try and pull the vinyl of the paper it was on, since it was such a large piece and had so many holes and shapes (being a stencil and all…) it would start to either rip if i pulled too hard or stick to itself….
After almost starting over with the first one (because pulling it apart to lay flat on the doormat was almost the death of me!), I realized I could try using clear transfer tape (basically contact paper) to help!
The transfer tape DID help remove the vinyl stencil in one piece a bit better… but trying to get the dang vinyl to stick to the coir doormat instead of the sticky transfer tape was impossible.
I’m honestly not quite sure how I finally got it off that transfer tape!
So my plan B didn’t work as well as I’d hoped either. Luckily, by this point I only had the words “hey there” to remove from their paper.
Since they were much smaller I was just super careful and used all my fingers at once to not let it stick to itself.
In hindsight, I think the transfer tape is the way to go for vinyl stencils. But only when it’s a material you can actually get the vinyl to stick to (i.e. wood sign, mirror for etching, monogramming a plate, etc.).
Unlike the coir doormat that isn’t smooth or easy to stick to in the least!
Anyways! SOMEHOW… I got the dang stencil on the doormat. Then I. Didn’t. Touch. It. Again.
Well, at least not with my fingers.
This DIY doormat project was starting to look like it was going to be a somewhat of a fail on my part.
PAINTING
After all the stencil pandemonium, I was nervous to even paint the thing since the stencil was basically just laying on the doormat rather than stuck on.
So, I decided to treat it like a plastic or cardstock stencil (which I’ve worked with before!)
I used my small, round sponge paint brush and carefully dabbed and stippled the paint into the holes of the stencil.
There were parts of the stencil that I had to hold in place while painting but all in all the painting process went fairly smoothly!
I also know I just had to get just a light coat on the doormat.
Just some paint in the correct shape of the letters would allow me to go back (with the stencil removed) and fill in the letters a bit more just as I described before on our monogram doormat.
Once I was finished painting, I let it dry for an hour or so before removing the stencils.
WOW! I was SO impressed at how well the stencils worked for all the trouble they gave me!
It looked SOOOO good! My DIY doormat project carried on!
Like I said I would above, once the stencils were removed, I filled in the letters a bit more giving them a second coat.
(I didn’t use the round sponge brush for this as I need a smaller, finner tipped brush for more control.)
Another moment of honesty- one small glob of paint had not dried when I removed the stencil. It left a small drop right above one of the letters.
At first I started to panic and got really sad thinking I had just ruined my work…
Then I realized I could fix it (ONCE IT HAD DRIED FOR REAL!) by just cutting that chunk of coir down a bit!
It worked like a charm!
THE FINISHED PRODUCT
WOW. WOW. WOW!!
I am SO thrilled with the finished product of my DIY doormat! Once I got it on my front porch, I’m sure I squealed a bit.
Especially, after all that crazy trouble with the dang stencil!
I threw the doormat on top of this buffalo check doormat, added some mums, pumpkins and cornstalks and TA-DA!! An ADORABLE fall porch!
(If I do say so myself!)
Although there were some bumps in the road, I actually enjoyed making this DIY doormat! It was a fun project!
If you haven’t already, check out my other DIY projects!
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I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Have you made something along these lines? I’d LOVE to hear from you! Shoot me an email! Be sure to subscribe below so you never miss anything! Also follow me on Instagram and Pinterest!