BrittanyMakes

I’m incredibly cruel and teased you with peeks of a metallic zebra rug that I DIY’d when helping my girlfriend redesign her home office, back in August! I feel bad for holding out so long, but I originally had wanted to make a few more and host a giveaway (which I still might do), but time got away from me.  So, today I’ll share the tutorial so you can make your own!

I was quite fond of the faux zebra rugs crafted from drop cloths that hit the DIY stages a while ago.  I  thought about making my own but decided against it since I figured they would dirty easily, not to mention drop cloth fabric isn’t heavy and wouldn’t lay flat like a true rug would.

When deciding to make this rug I knew the only way for it to be a success if it met these two criteria: heavy in weight and easy to clean.  The perfect medium hit me as I was browsing the fabric store – vinyl! It was perfect, a fabric that is wipe-able, durable, and heavy enough to lay flat like a true rug.  The quality of vinyl these days is very impressive.  For this rug in particular I chose some vinyl with the color and texture of linen, but I’ve also made one for myself from smooth white vinyl, so any vinyl of your fancy would work perfectly!

Materials Needed:

• 2 yards of Kraft paper
• Scissors
• 2 yards of upholstery width vinyl (54″ wide)
• 2 Krylon gold leaf pens

STEP 1 Sketch out the outline of your zebra rug on your Kraft paper.  You really only need to do this for one side of the rug since you can flip over and use for the other side.  I used this image when sketching out my zebra rug, as well as for the stripes.

STEP 2 Flip your vinyl over wrong side up, lay your Kraft paper stencil down and trace the zebra outline.  Flip the Kraft stencil over to the opposite side of the vinyl and trace.  Then, cut out the zebra form.

STEP 3 Flip your vinyl right side up.  Lay your zebra stencil on top of the vinyl and begin drawing the outlines of the zebra’s stripes with the gold leaf pen on the opposite side, mirroring the stencil.  You can fill in the stripes as you go, or outline first then fill in after. I worked a hybrid method as I drew the stripes.

Don’t worry one bit about being perfect, the great thing about zebra stripes is they are unpredictable and weird, so you really can’t mess up.

STEP 4 Now that you have the left side complete, remove the Kraft stencil and freehand the stripes on the right side.

The gold leaf pen dries quickly and is permanent as far as I’ve experienced, but if you want you can seal the rug by spraying a coat of clear acrylic spray paint as a protectant.

The options are endless for this rug! If gold isn’t your thing, try a black Sharpie or a Montana Cans paint pens, which comes in all colors of the rainbow including gold and copper (and are CRAZY permanent, ask my husband what happened to our brand new sheets when I accidentally shook the pen too hard.  Oops!)

And there you have it! Who would have thought the secret to a killer faux zebra rug is vinyl?