How To: DIY Personalized Front Door Mats

One of the Christmas presents we gave our family was personalized outdoor door mats.  Using this post by Martha Stewart as my inspiration, I set out to make mats with names on them - while Martha's uses numbers. 

We started with plain mats from Ikea.  

The ones we bought are called Trampa and run less than $10 each.

Just like Martha says, I first started with creating a border.  For these, I used blue painters tape to make an edge that would remain un-painted.  From there, because I was doing names, not numbers, I had to create a stencil.  I did this by printing out the name on paper, affix it to a piece of posterboard and pricking holes through the posterboard to create an outline of the name.  Using a pair of sharp, small scissors, I cut the letters out - leaving behind custom stencil.

I popped the stencil in the middle of the mat and taped everything down.

Then came the easy part:  spray painting the mats.  Being careful to protect the mat I used a piece of scrap cardboard to make a guard that I held in one hand while spraying in the other.  This kept the paint off of the portions of the mat that I wanted blank.

I made these mats for a bunch of Nat's cousins/aunts/uncles.  With everyone sharing a last name, one stencil went a long way.  If you're looking for a personalized gift for someone at Christmas-time, this is something that's pretty easy to do and will most definitely be used by the recipient.  Everyone can use a door mat, right?