In my last blog I wrote about painting and researching this beautiful art deco floor mat. Not only does the shape add protection from liquid and food to the hardwood beneath but the colors and design really brighten this dark kitchen. Add some purple/red towels and kitchen ornaments and you have a match made in art deco heaven.
A client loved this popular, 1950s, now contemporary, fabric design and wanted it displayed on a mat in her kitchen. This is a good example of how an element of personal home decor could be incorporated into the floor on a mat. Imagine how your wallpaper, tile or fabric would look. It was fun to paint but hard to install this very large 12′ x 10′ floor mat.
My current client wanted to match a table place mat she liked both with similar colors and style. The solution was creating a pattern using a custom cut stencil. Dry brushing paint with a stencil can add visual texture to a solid area. The effect is easy and relatively fast considering the hundreds of squares that needed to be painted. Turning up the music also helps. 🙂
Finally the revisited strawberry mats have been finished and delivered. As you may remember from my last blog I was hired to create new strawberry mats to replace a strawberry mat I designed 8 years ago. They loved the colors and theme but were ready for something different. Instead of one large mat the mat was broken into two smaller mats covering the same basic area. Another mat was added for the laundry room. The outcome, a playful, welcoming, colorful floor display.
The below image is a mat I did 8 years ago. I recently received a call from the client who loves their mat but is ready for a redesign. The challenge is they still would like strawberries and the same colors in the design. They also want the mat divided in two and an additional mat for the laundry room. I came up with a great new design that they loved. The second image is a preview of the start of that design, stay tuned to see the finished, fully designed mats.
I finished this candy cane striped mat for a mall in Canada just in time for Santa. It makes me smile ear to ear knowing all the little feet that will be scampering across the mat to whisper their Christmas wishes into Santa’s ear. Happy Holidays indeed! Ho! Ho! Ho!
I was hired by an interior designer who was creating a bowling alley themed room for a model home. Since mats can be cut to any shape I was able to incorporate not only the perspective of a narrowing lane, but also a cartoon-like pin explosion onto the wall. (I painted the mural art as well). Entering the room on the lane, (no bowling shoes required), your imagination takes off almost hearing the crack of the pins flying before you. I had a lot of fun painting this mat and literately unrolled a strike with the interior designer.
I’ve designed mats in interesting shapes before but this mat was the ultimate. One side was geometric, the other an organic curve. Without a very large old-fashion french curve (a plastic sled-like templet used to hand draw unusual shapes), I was left to take increment measurements and literally draw freehand the arc on a very large paper templet. Wow, what a process… and then there’s the design… a pseudo Lichtenstein mosaic divided into individual frisco backgrounds. Not to mention, below this design was another painted design that I decided didn’t work. Talk about taking it to the mat… Whew!
This is the first time I’ve designed a mat that filled the entire floor, edge to edge. Usually mats move slightly like area rugs so I don’t like them to butt against anything. However, because this mat was going to be adhered to the floor, it wasn’t a problem. This kitchen and the entire house had a southwest theme so the design of mocked stone tiles seemed appropriate. I handmade stencils and then dry brushed faux tile finishes. The background itself is a beautiful soft faux giving the overall appearance of a rustic southwest blanket. The mat was an inspiration for the client to redo the cabinets and paint the walls. Scroll down to see the ’before‘ picture – you won’t believe your eyes. This is one for the record books. I don’t know who had the harder project – me or the client.
What do you do when the room offers very little… there’s no color, style, or theme. Believe it or not, the hardest mat for me to design is when I can do anything I want. Check out below the ‘before’ picture of this kitchen – I got nothin’. To make matters worse, the client wanted a very large mat, one that would drop over the kitchen island donut style – a cool idea. In the end, I decided a Tuscan style design would work well with the gray stone tile. The result (see the next photo) was this rustic, playful mat where the art flowed around the island totally stylizing the kitchen. Sometimes you get something from nothing. Words to live by.
Studio K Blog 
