Working with interior designers is both challenging and exciting, especially when starting from scratch to produce a custom canvas rug. They have very specific ideas of what they want.

Interior designers work from the beginning with a complete vision; they put together everything from the type of furniture, the colors of upholstery, the curtains, wall color, and of course floor treatment that will be integrated for their client. Working to create an exclusive design may take some time for ideas to go back and forth, samples to view, colors to confirm, but the final product can be stunning.

Delivery was made of the Canvas Rug for the project by the interior design company of which I have previously blogged about. I took a picture but will eagerly await a photograph of the finished product in situ.

Our client's comments on this particular custom canvas rug, "It is beautiful! No words, outstanding!!! Thank you Laurel! Great Job!"  Daniel Mojica, Senior Interior Designer, Tamarindo Pacific Interiors, Costa Rica.

How does one incorporate a hand painted canvas rug into one's own home? The home is already decorated, colors established, furniture in place. Many clients tire of trying to keep a regular woven rug clean. Woven rugs require constant vacuuming to be rid of dust, dirt, sand or pet hair. The chemicals required to clean can be costly and toxic. So perhaps the time has come to consider a new floor covering; canvas rugs, aka floor cloths, are the perfect solution.

Perusing catalogs and websites for rugs can generate many ideas. We have just recently created a series of rugs where the inspiration came from a rug site. We don't copy the designs, but colors, shapes, borders, can come from browsing different sites.

Perhaps you find a rug you think would look nice in your living room. We can play with the colors; adjust the design according to the size of the rug. Send us a photograph of your room to help us create a hand painted canvas rug that fits into your lifestyle.

Anyone can buy a rug. If creating your own seems to be too much of a challenge, let us take the challenge for you !

The canvas rug is now ready to paint. The cloth border has been sewn on and covered with tape; after the rug is painted and varnished, the border will then be tinted. Two coats of base paint were applied in as many days to the canvas in preparation.

 Next comes marking the borders to be painted, measuring the 8” border and also the ½” border at the same time. This is marked with a pencil. I drew the turtle back design by hand all around, and then applied a wash; the wash is acrylic paint watered down to give a light tint to the border surrounding the turtle back design. It will make the border stand out and give definition as opposed to the whole rug having the same base color.

 The turtle back design is ready to be hand painted. Small jars are used sitting on paper or plastic, to have colors close at hand and easy to handle and a paint brush for each color. Retouching is sometimes necessary as sometimes the paint dries leaving untouched spots.

 The vital part of painting is music and lighting. Dancing music is not a good idea as not much work will be accomplished! 

 Painting a border is easy to access; I use a chair with rollers and just move around the table. Painting designs in the center of a large area rug is trickier. Put a cloth or sheet on the floor at the foot of the table and use a tube to roll the rug so that one end is rolled up on the floor and the other is at the start of your table. This way a design can be painted starting at one end and rolled up onto the table as you work.

 Stamps are fun and easy to make. A stamp for the herringbone design had already been made for the sample so it’s just a matter of paint and stamp! A foam brush works best as it applies paint evenly to the stamp. A small part of the design was placed at the bottom of the stamp so there was a marker for the next one to begin. Paint, stamp, paint,stamp;again, music is vital.

 Finally the ½” border is painted all around and the canvas rug is left to dry for day before varnishing.  I use Satin polyurethane varnish and an important step is to stir well so the agent that makes the varnish satin and not shiny is well incorporated into the varnish.

Investing in a very nice brush makes the application so smooth and even; it’s worth it to have good brushes if you take care of them well.

 This canvas rug will have four coats of varnish in as many days. The next step will be the tinting of the border. Next week we’ll share the finished product!

 

 

 

Sometimes you just have to see the sample designs when working on a custom canvas rug; relying on e-mails and digital photos are great time savers, however, it can be difficult to imagine the whole concept with photos of small painted pieces. So, I contacted my designer client and offered to pay him a visit to help determine the exact design.

 The challenge of creating custom designs gets my creative juices going; I really enjoy it! But it’s important that my interpretation is inline with that of the client; it can be quite costly if we are not both 100% sure of what this canvas rug will look like before we start the painting process.

 It just so happened that a blank canvas rug of the same size for this project was in stock in the studio; along with the painted design samples I rolled it up to take to the designer. This will not be the rug used for this custom rug because his will have a canvas border as described in the previous blog.

 My designer client confessed: he wasn’t sure if the stamped herringbone design should be incorporated as the main design or be used along the border. Or would the turtle shell look best? Because he knows where the rug will be positioned, the discussion went something like this:

 Will there be furniture in the center therefore making a more detailed design along the border?  or

Will there be furniture around the rug therefore making the detailed design in the center?

 With the painted design samples placed upon the blank rug laid out for him, I also composed a drawing to scale to show how much area will have the herringbone in the center. It was a bonus that the bedroom furniture to be used for the project was available in the showroom.

 It is on my wish list to have the computer program that will allow me to scan sample designs and cut and paste to create variations to scale to show a client. But for now this process worked quite well; it all come together to see the size of the rug and the proportion of the design. It is going to look so cool!

 So the design for this canvas rug project is approved. The canvas material has been preshrunk, measured and painted with a sealer. The special requested canvas border is sewn and the canvas rug is ready for its base coat. Now that designer and artist are clear on colors and design for this custom order, it’s time to shop for paint. Stay tuned for the final outcome!