Door mat using freezer paper as a stencil

It was one of those “almost, but not quite” moments. My husband, noticing our front door mat was looking ratty, proudly brought home a new one. Only problem — it wasn’t exactly my ideal design. I had been planning to make a custom one. Famous last words, right? My dear hubby knows I could never finish in 20 lifetimes all the projects I have planned. So, I decided to bite my tongue and let it be. I figured it would wear out eventually anyway.

Fast forward to this spring and we are revamping our front porch — painting the door, replacing the lights, adding a railing planter, etc. (Check out my post on how I made my vertical Welcome sign). I figured this would be a great opportunity to personalize the door mat like I had originally planned. Plus, I’ve been meaning to try the freezer paper method. Here’s my before and after–

Now, I’m gonna keep it real here and tell you that I rated my finished door mat somewhere between “total fail” and “mehhhhh.” I did learn some things along the way that might help you so I decided it was worth writing the post. You’ll see that I didn’t have as many photos as I normally include with my posts because I seriously thought I’d ditch the whole thing.

Note: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you click the link and purchase something, I receive a small commission. You pay the same price. This helps me to be able to keep my business going and provide more tutorials.

Step 1: Gather Door mat materials

Coco Coir door mat — It can be plain like this one, or have a border like this or this. This material is extremely durable and takes paint well.

Silhouette Cameo or Portrait

Vinyl and transfer media — For your stencil, you can use vinyl OR freezer paper. I used the latter. With the freezer paper, you heat the wax so that it sticks temporarily to your door mat. The vinyl has a really hard time sticking to the door mat, even the nice brand of stencil vinyl. I suggest you read through all the directions to decide which is best for you.

Paint (and maybe brush) — I thought I would prefer using spray paint because I usually have fewer problems with the paint bleeding under the stencil. But since it’s hard to get the stencil to stick to the door mat, I was afraid the spraying movements would blow the stencil pieces off. I ended up using a stencil brush and acrylic paint. After I finished, I decided spray paint would probably have been the way to go because with the brush I found it hard to get it deep into the door mat.

Weeding tool

Iron

Spray sealer

Lesson learned: Try the stencil material and paint options beforehand if possible.

Step 2: Plan and setup

My door mat has been used for awhile, so I needed to clean it. A lint roller worked way better than my vacuum cleaner to get off the dirt and dog hair. It’s a good idea to do this even with a new mat to remove loose fibers. If it’s really dirty, hose it down and let it dry thoroughly.

Measure your door mat. If you have a border, measure that also.

Set your page size to the size of the door mat. Draw rectangles to mimic the size of the area where you want your design. For example–

My mat is 30″ x 18″, so that’s my page size.
The border starts 1.25″ in from the edge and is 2.75″ wide. That’s a total of 4″ in from the outer edge. The max area for my design is 22″ x 10″ — 30″ minus 4″ on each side and 18″ minus 4″ each on top and bottom. I centered that to the page. Then I made a 2.75″ offset of that to represent the outside of the border.

I ALWAYS work with filled shapes. It makes them easier to grab and helps visualize my finished project. I filled my inner rectangle with tan to represent the design area and the offset one with black to represent the border.

Now choose your wording. I’m going to be boring and just use our family name. But there are TONS of creative ideas out there like–

No need to ring the bell. We know you’re here. — the dogs (add a few pawprints)
Speak friend and enter (a well-chosen font makes all the difference here — try Cottage Script or Story Time)
Hi. I’m Mat.
Hey, y’all
I hope you brought wine
Doorbell broken. Yell “Ding Dong” really loud instead.

Step 3: Design

I used 3 text boxes and 2 fonts — Bohemian Script and Being Love Sans. One script and one all caps block font is a good mix.

Resize your text boxes and align the pieces to make sure they’re centered on your door mat. BEWARE — the software centers the text box, not the letters themselves. Because of the way fonts are made, the text might not look centered in the box. For example, if I used a different name that didn’t have any capital letters or any with ascenders (like a “d” or “l”), the text box still leaves room for those. Notice here how the top and bottom of the text box are along the tan rectangle, but it appears that it’s not centered.

To avoid this, make a copy of your text boxes. Then use “Convert to Path” in the object drop down menu or the right click menu for each text box to remove that extra space around the letters. We made a copy of the text boxes because once it’s a regular image like this, you can’t go back and change the letters or font or even identify the font. (To learn more about why this is and text in general, check out my text series starting here.)

“Family” is longer than “the.” If I center the name on the page, it looks too close to “family” and too far from “the.” I moved the those 2 text boxes the same distance from the top and side of the tan rectangle (or so I thought — didn’t do it correctly), then just adjusted the name to look good to my eye.

Lesson learned: “The” and “family” should have been bigger. It was hard to get a clean paint line with such thin letters.

Step 4: Cut and weed the stencil

This is by far the trickiest step. You need to get your stencil off the mat without ripping it, so go slowly. To minimize curling, flip the mat over and pull it off the paper. Keep your weeding tool or spatula handy to slide between the freezer paper and mat as needed. That’s helpful for thin tips. There will be small parts like the middle of a letter “o” that aren’t connected. Just hang on to those and you’ll place them on by hand. I leave them on the mat until I need them so I don’t lose them.

Pro tip: Mark the center and middle around both your door mat and stencil. Then line those marks up so your design is centered on the door mat.

Now you’ll use your iron to melt the wax and attach it temporarily to your door mat. Don’t slide the iron — pick it up and put it down, holding each area for about 10 seconds. For any sections that just aren’t staying down, use pins to hold them while you paint. Use extra strips of the freezer paper mask off the any area of the door mat around your stencil. HOWEVER — if your door mat has a border, don’t apply heat either directly (the paint sticks to your iron) or indirectly (the wax melts into the paint and doesn’t come off easily). If you’re using spray paint, go around the sides as well.

Lesson learned: For the already-existing border, I should have just covered it with painter’s tape. It took some scrubbing to get the wax off.

For vinyl, follow the same steps you normally would — apply the transfer media, remove the vinyl backing, apply to the door mat. I like using the hinge method, which I covered in here.

Step 5: Transfer the stencil to the door mat

Pro tip: Mark the center and middle around both your door mat and stencil. Then line those marks up so your design is centered on the door mat.

Lesson learned: For the already-existing border, I should have just covered it with painter’s tape. It took some scrubbing to get the wax off.

For vinyl, follow the same steps you normally would — apply the transfer media, remove the vinyl backing, apply to the door mat. I like using the hinge method, which I here. I will tell you it’s really tricky to get the transfer media off because the vinyl doesn’t stick to the mat.

Step 6: Paint the door mat

To paint, you want to make sure you’re vertically as much as possible. If you work horizontally, the paint is more likely to bleed under the stencil. If you’re using acrylic paint and a brush or sponge, pounce straight downward. Also, work from outside the design toward the inside of it so that you’re not pulling up the stencil as you go. With spray paint, lay your door mat on the ground and spray paint as much as possible from directly above.

As with any paint, several thin coats are best.

It was at this point that I thought, “This is a total fail! I’m not going to show this to anyone! I’ll have to spray paint the whole thing black and come up with another way to add a design.” And I didn’t get the paint as dense as I should have. But it actually came out better than I expected (still not great, but better).

Lesson learned: Don’t judge the success of the product until it’s finished.

Step 7: Remove the stencil

I definitely recommend you seal your door mat. I just used a spray sealer I had on hand, but there are many that will work. You can do it before removing the stencil if you like so that you’re sealing the paint only and not the door mat, or do it afterward. I did the latter because, again, I was thinking this was a lost cause. Make sure the paint is fully dry and cured. I waited until ~~the next day~~ after lunch.

Carefully remove the stencil. Use a small paint brush to do any touchups as needed.

Take it up a notch

Once you’ve done one door mat, you might be hooked and want to make more! Here are some more ideas and ways to get even more creative–

Seasonal doormats are always fun.
Use multiple colors of paint.
Create a checkerboard border with 2 colors of paint.
Add a thin, patterned door mat under your painted one.

Do you have any other tips? Any more funny sayings? Be sure to comment!