DIY Designer Knock-Off Textile Art from a Recycled Rug
How to make your own designer knock-off textile art using an old rug and a shadow box in less than 10 minutes.
Nothing is safe anymore. If it will fit in a frame or can be stretch as a canvas, you can bet your bottom dollar I’m gonna hang it on our walls.
Over the years, we’ve repurposed all kinds of things for art: sheet music, book pages, shower curtains, calendar pages, pressed flowers, leaves, seriously… a lot of stuff.
While I was browsing around on a couple of my favorite high-end shops’ websites, I noticed lots of textile art. And they were all priced to the tune of $500 – $1,000! ‘Kay, bye. I mean, I loved them but no, thanks.
But then I remembered we had a rug in our kitchen that we were getting ready to replace. So I realized, “I’m cutting it up and putting it in a frame!”
10 minutes and $0 later, I had designer-y textile art.
DIY Designer Knock-Off Textile Art
(Some affiliate links are provided below. Full disclosure here.)
Supplies Used:
- Jersey sized 20″x30″ shadow box (Or this one comes in lots of colors for a bit more $, if you like options.)
- Flatweave cotton or wool rug (either a sample/accent size or an old one you plan to retire – this is mine)
- Tape measure
- Fabric scissors
- Fabric pen or Sharpie
- Hot glue and hot glue sticks
- Canvas dropcloth (optional)
- Spray adhesive (optional)
- Chalk paint (optional)
The Steps:
1. I already had a shadow box from when I made Olivia’s butterfly display art 3 years ago that I painted white with a little Annie Sloan Pure White chalk paint.
2. For the backer board, I love a linen look. So cutting out a piece of canvas drop cloth and gluing it to the backer board with spray adhesive does the job for cheap.
You don’t have to do either one of those things, but if you have an all black shadow box you want to brighten up, it works great.
3. Measure and mark the size you need for your frame on your rug. I used the frame measurements and subtracted about 3 inches from the width and length.
4. Cut your marked rug with fabric scissors. I cut off the rug’s tassels, but you can leave them on if you’d like.
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5. Hot glue the rug remnant onto the shadow box backer board.
6. Frame and hang!
This might be a new record for fastest, cheapest designer knock-off ever. And this was probably the most Captain Obvious tutorial ever, but there ya go.
I love the texture it adds to that little corner over here in our living room!
If you want to mimic the look yourself but don’t have a rug you can cut up to make it, here are a bunch of cute accent rugs around $15-30 that would look so beautiful framed.
I’m really hoping to share more DIY designer dupes in the coming weeks because they’re SO much fun to me.
What do you think? What designer dupes would you want to see? I’ve got my wheels turning now.
If you want more DIY wall decor & art ideas, you can click those links to see them all.
