How to make a custom door mat

I love nothing more than walking down my drive and seeing the door mat that I made. I just love it and the best thing is as it was so easy to make I can change it every season. Personalising and making my own door mat was a lot simpler that I ever could off imagined. I'm so glad I tried it and now i'm addicted to making them. In this blog I will explain to you everything you need to know and how to make a custom door mat.

To make a door mat you will need the following items:

Design - You can buy a design or create your own design.

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Choosing the design

For the design I just used text, this allowed me to design my door mat in Design Space. There are loads of pre made designs that you can purchase from sites such as Design Bundles, there are designs that cater for every season and occasion.

Designing Your Mat

Design space screen ready for us to add our design

Load up design space and start by typing in the word that you wish to use, for my design I chose the word HOME.

Design space screen showing the word Home

Next decide on the font that you wish to use, this can be any font of your choice. I chose the font DTC Sunday Melon. I purchased this font from Design Bundles.

Font box opened on design space to allow us to change the font of the word home.

Sizing your design

Measuring the front of the mat length ways

Measure the size of your mat so you know your maximum size. My mat was 28 inches wide so I knew that I had plenty of room for my text to be in the middle. I made my text 20 inches across and cricut made that to be 8.11 inches high which fits perfectly in the middle of my mat.

Measuring the front of the mat width ways

Altering your design

Design space screen showing the word home resized

To make the design a bit different ungroup all the letters and swap the letter O for a heart shape.

Design space scorn showing the shape options that are available

To get the heart shape click on the shapes icon and select a heart. This will place the heart shape onto your canvas.

Using the arrows resize the heart so it matches the size of the letter O. You may need to unlock the padlock in order to get the size required.

The heart shape overlapping the letter O to be resized

Once you have the size you require then you can delete the letter O and place the heart shape in its place. Whilst all the letters are ungrouped this is the perfect time to space them as you would like them.

The resized heart in the place of the letter O

Once you have the design as you would like it, select all the design and click on the attach button. This will attach all your letters together ready for cutting.

The word home with a heart instead of an O

Make It

Now you are ready to cut your design. Click on make it and you will be taken to the mat screen. You will see that the cricut is telling you that you have a large design so you will need to use a 12 x 24 inch cutting mat. click on ok to continue. For this I used the standard grip green mat.

The mat screen showing us how the design will be cut

As we are using freezer paper to make a stencil you will not need mirror the design so you can click on continue.

Preparing the mat

Now is the time to prepare the mat. Unroll your freezer paper and carefully add the freezer paper to the mat. Make sure the paper is placed on the mat with the shiny side stuck to the mat and the paper side is at the top. Try and get the freezer paper as smooth as possible on the mat. Trim off any unneeded paper from the edges.

Adding and trimming down freezer paper to the large standard grip mat

Selecting the material

Back in design space we now need to set the base material. To do this click on browse all material and in the search box type in freezer paper.

Design space showing the materials that can be selected. I have typed in freezer paper

You should then see 1 result that will show you freezer paper. Click on the freezer paper and this will set this as the material you are going to be using.

Next set the pressure, as the freezer paper is so thin I left the pressure as default. Load your mat into your machine and you are ready to go. Press the flashing cricut button and your machine will start cutting.

design space asking us to set the cutting pressure. I chose more

Weeding the design

Unload your cutting mat from your machine and keep the freezer paper totally on the mat. Take your weeding tool and start to weed out the letters and heart whilst the paper is still on the mat. I found this to be the easiest way to weed the design. Once all the letters and the heart have been weeded then carefully peel the freezer paper off the mat. When you are doing this it will curl up but this is totally normal.

Removing the freezer paper from the large mat

Positioning the stencil

The freezer paper placed on the mat and being measured with a tape measure to make sure it is central

Position the stencil on your door mat, keeping it as central as possible. I used a tape measure to get my design as central as I could. Once you are happy with the position of the stencil, using frog tape tape down all the edges and use the pins to pin the design onto the mat.

The design being frog tapped to the mat to keep it in place

Don't forget about the centre part of the letter e.

Using pins to hold down the centre of the letters ready for painting

Using your heat press lightly press the freezer paper to the mat. The waxy side of the freezer paper will help the freezer paper to adhere to the mat. This does not adhere to the same degree as HTV vinyl does too material, therefore it will remove really easily once you are ready to remove it.

Painting

I chose outdoor acrylic paint for painting the mat. I wanted a paint that would be durable to withstand the weather and outdoor acrylic paint seemed the best option for me.

Squirt the paint into the letter stencil and using a stencil brush dab the paint. Do not paint the paint on as you normally would as this won't allow the paint to get deep into the fibres. Dab the brush up and down until all the letter is filled in. This will give you crisp lines and a perfect looking mat. Paint the heart shape in exactly the same way. I repeated this process twice.

using a paintbrush to dab the paint into the mat

When you have painted all the letters you do not have to wait for the paint to dry, you can start again and paint the letters again straight away.

Removing the freezer paper

The best time to remove the freezer paper is whilst the paint still feels tacky. Carefully remove the paper starting in the corner. I left the pins in and they were removed as I pulled out the paper but you could always remove the pins first to save for another project.

As the paint will still be slightly wet be careful not to get the paint on your mat and spoil your design.

Finishing touches

Once your mat has dried, if you wish you could spray your mat with acrylic sealer to protect it. This is optional, I however didn't bother spraying my mat and its been totally fine outside.