Custom Rugs: Getting the Feel for Design

As I work on each new project the process to learn more about interior design, as much as "feelings" of a room created through design, expand. And as work with interior designers continues, they leave more of the design aspects of a painted floor cloth in my hands. Often they present a photograph and say, "Make it look like this." Focusing on a particular aspect of the photo, my creative instincts hone in on a specific detail. For example, a recent custom canvas order was presented via a color photo of a hand holding a turtle. 

Before getting to the most fun part of the project, the design and painting of the floor cloth, the question of size came up. The size of this floor cloth rug was to be 8' x 10' but did the designer  prefer one giant turtle shell on the whole of the rug?

If yes, the visibility of the design would be lost once covered with furniture. On such a large rug, the six inch size of the turtle shell would create a very small detailed pattern, likely less discernible from a distance and possibly too busy. When I create custom canvas rugs, it is always with that fact in mind; these works of art are to be viewed under foot. Some of us will be closer to it than others; as an average, my line of site is a little over 5 feet away, looking down.

The turtle's shell offers an unusual natural design; I started the project making a foam stamp that mimics its shape and detail. The client "loves color," I was told. Taking directly from nature, I selected a rich, dark brown, Turkish Coffee it's called, for the background of the rug.  

Next, I applied paints of deep orange and golden yellow to the stamp. These colors "pop" out from the dark brown and although the rug now incorporates these brighter colors, it doesn't look garish.

Perhaps the idea is to look beyond the actual design and simply pull from it the shapes and colors for a pattern. In this case, the designer decided on a stamp size measuring 12 inches thus allowing a row of eight turtle stamps across the rug, widthwise. This gave us the opportunity to see the actual shape of the turtle shell.

In the process of applying the colors to the turtle shell stamp, I recognized on the second row of the rounded design, vacant spaces between the rows. To add a bit more dimension to the design, I used a diamond shape stamp and filled in with the same turtle shell colors and voila!

This painted floor cloth design, drawn from nature, turned out beautifully with an organic and ethnic feel.

One of the more important aspects when creating a painted floor cloth as floor art is that patterns within the design should blend and flow with the rest of the décor in the room.

In my next blog post we'll talk about how the patterns found within a room can blend well or become too busy and clash when adding  painted floor cloths. It all comes down to the feeling a client wishes to create and the better use of space. After all, where we spend our time should give us that which we wish to live.