Fab Find Friday: Upcycled Kitchen Mat

My house has become a recycling center.  Ha ha, not really but I've been trying to make our house look nice and homey with little money as possible.  I've been thrift store shopping, garage sale hunting and re-purposing some of our old decor to make it look new!  One of our neighbors had a garage sale a few months ago and I bought her old kitchen mat, painted it, and made it my own! 

See the mat on the left there?  That's the one I painted!  

Source: theprojectcorner.blogspot.com via Jordan on Pinterest

I got the Idea from The Project Corner.  Her mat looks so much more professional and pretty, but I can't complain about the way mine turned out!

My mat started out looking like this-faded, cracked, and there were even some small pieces of the foam coming off.  I initially painted the "front" the light beige color and it looked terrible .  Justin suggested that I paint the back since it was in much better condition.  So I did!  And it looked a lot better.  He's so smart!

I found a design I liked from the internet and made a stencil out of card stock.  I traced the stencil onto the mat and hand painted each medallion shape free hand rather than using a stencil brush.  I did it this way because 1) I didn't have a stencil brush and 2) I'm not that great with stencils.  I can never get them to come out right. 

I added 2 coats of clear satin varnish to the top to keep the paint from chipping and then it was ready for my kitchen floor!

What do y'all think?  It's so comfy to stand on! It saves my feet and knees from aching after a long day of work, supper cooking, and dish washing.

Overall this project cost me less than $2!  I bought the paint on sale at Michael's and I already had the varnish.