Having been ticked off by one of my nearest and dearest for producing too much food and not enough craft on the blog lately I thought it was about time I sorted that out. Plus, I’m a little bit scared of her.

Having noticed the doormats along the street were pretty much all exactly the same, and needing to acquire one, I thought of this little make.

My housemate provided the rather excellent pun for ours, I can’t take the credit for that.

This could double as a housewarming gift or wedding present too if you’re a bit strapped for cash and want to give something unique and homemade.

Things you need

Plain doormat (check if it’s indoor or outdoor depending where you want it. Wilkinson’s have both for about £4)

Spray paint (again, mine came from Wilko’s)

Newspaper

Double sided tape

A sheet of paper or newspaper as big as the mat.

Step one

Draw a grid on your big sheet of paper. You are going to use this paper as the stencil; the grid will help you centre your design evenly and space everything out well. You don’t absolutely have to do this, but I recommend it. I just used the width of the ruler.

Step two

Sketch out your design.

Have a think about what you want to be sprayed and what will be mat coloured. If, like me, you are spraying the background and leaving the letters the colour of the mat make sure you keep them fairly bold and chunky. The spry has a nasty habit of creeping underneath.

Step three

Cut out your design, leaving everything that’s meant to be mat coloured in tact and leaving gaps where the spray will go.

Step four

Go outside and lay out newspaper on an even surface. Place the mat on top and arrange your stencil.

I used double sided tape to secure the letters. I won’t lie, this didn’t work perfectly as they did still curl up a little, but I couldn’t think of a better solution – blu tac would have stayed in the bristles of the mat.

Step four

Spray away. Keep the can about 20cm away from the surface. I used two colours and sort of merged them in the middle.

Here’s a tiny gif (I apologise, it’s not my best, I was too distracted by all the spray paint flying in my face to concentrate on the photography) but I got complaints last week for not including one…

Step five

Leave to dry and add another layer or two until the colour is quite pronounced. As you are most likely spraying onto a brown mat it’s unlikely you will get it totally opaque. Try to choose colours that are light and bright or really dark. The lilac colour didn’t work quite so well, so I sprayed some white on top to brighten it up a bit. The blue was good, and I think yellow might work well too.

Step six

Bring a smile or a roll of the eyes to your post man’s face.