canvas floor cloth

I have found that it's really easy to get caught up in home decor trends. While I love to use popular styles and patterns in our home, I don't like spending the money on items that I might get tired of over time. One thing I have been wanting is a colorful geometric or Moroccan inspired rug to go beneath one side of our kitchen counter. I wanted something long and narrow but the options that I found were the wrong size or were way out of my price range. When I run into this type of challenge (as many of you know), I like to figure out a way to make my own!

I settled on the one thing that I have lots of experience with...canvas! And while I know that canvas floor clothes are nothing new, I wanted to share this project to pass along a little inspiration to those of you out there on a tight home decor budget!

I've found that when creating canvas floor clothes, it helps to have your canvas primed really well. You can use any kind of canvas. Raw canvas or even canvas drop clothes will work, you will just need to prime it with gesso or white paint. I typically work with raw canvas but for this project I actually used medium weight cotton canvas, acrylic primed. I have a roll of this canvas that I've had for years that I pull out for floor clothes or projects that require a a heavy or smooth surface.

TIP: A canvas drop cloth will work just fine for this project but the cheaper drop clothes have a very loose weave and can distort over time. I've found that a couple coats of white paint (I use house paint) or gesso will give you a nice smooth and heavy surface for painting.

Even though my canvas came primed, I gave it one more coat of white paint and then I got busy painting pattern with acrylic paint. Before I started my project, I collected all kinds of inspiration from different rugs, patterns and designs. I decided that I wanted my floor cloth to have a crazy "mash up" of patterns and lots of color.

I also decided that I didn't want things to be too perfect or fussy so I free handed most of my patterns and embraced my lines and shapes being a little wonky.

Most of my painting projects end up going pretty fast but this floor cloth took me forever! There was a lot of space to fill and a lot of layers which means lots of time spent waiting for paint to dry.

The last step was to seal everything. I've tried a lot of products when it comes to sealing canvas and my favorite thing to use is Minwax Satin Water-Based Polyurethane. While a canvas floor mat will go through wear and tear, sealing it with a couple coats of polyurethane will make it last longer!

When using a canvas floor cloth in on hardwood floors, it is important to make sure it doesn't slip. You can use a floor gripper or double sided carpet tape under the floor cloth to keep it from moving.

You can check out how I created our doodled dishwasher HERE and our painted counter tops HERE