How I Made It: Wall Hanging from a Cheap Rug

Aztec Inspired Wal Hanging Tutorial - It's easier than you'd think!

Wall hangings make great art. They're textural and oftentimes you can get a large one for less than you'd pay for traditional art. Making wall hangings is even better. And I've got a great way of making a wall hanging without full on making a wall hanging.

There's two ways you can do this, both ways involve sourcing a rug.

They way I went was to check out the Target Clearance end caps. Whenever new merchandise comes in, the older merchandise has got to go out and most of the time this merchandise is still timeless and/or on trend. You'd be looking for a rug that looks like what you want your wall hanging to look like. I wanted one that was truly woven and a bit thicker.

The other way to go about it would be to source a vintage rug. A lot of times really fabulous vintage rugs get passed by because they're small and people don't know what to do with them. I have plenty of suggestions for what to do with them but I'll save that for another blog post and just say you can totally make them into wall art!

aztec inspired handmade wall hanging tutorial

How I Made It:

I started out by lying my rug onto a piece of leftover trim and marking out where I'd need to make a cut. This piece is what keeps the rug flat and stable and is what the entire things hangs from. I then just sawed the excess off with a simple hand saw and nailed the rug into the wood.

Use scrap floor trim an a hand saw to cut

Then I took two eyelet screws and screwed them on either end of the top of the trim. I tied a coordinating length of yarn onto the eyelet screws. I liked the look of leaving extra yarn hang from the knot and eyed how low I wanted the rug to hang from the point it would hang from.

Screw in two eye screws into either end of wood trim

The leather overlay in the center was really easy to create using scrap leather-like fabric. I created the center point by sketching out the width of a ruler, then measured out and mark at 2, 4, 6, 6, 4, and 2 inch marks.

measurments for aztec mexican diamond

I used a folded corner of a piece of paper to create the points since that gave me a clean 45 degree angle.

use folded piece of paper for easy 45 dgree angle stencil

A craft knife and a metal ruler made it easy to cut the design out and I simply hot glued it to the center of the rug.

use a straight edge like a steel ruler to cut out the leather overlay

Once everything was cut, glued, and screwed into place, I hung it up in my living room. I really love how easy it was to pull together and the extra layer of texture it adds to my living room. The possibilities are so endless with a DIY like this and I'm keeping my eye out for more cute rugs to turn wall hanging.
What kind of art have you made for your walls? Have you seen something you wanted and thought it could be replicated? You should go for it and make art for your walls!

Give this post a share!? It helps me out a ton, I really appreciate it!


that ukulele! cute! a little about a gallery wall saturated with pinks and coral

a handmade wall hanging made from an item you probably aren't expecting...

 

2 comments

  1. Very nice! I love the color and the idea of hanging a rug on the wall.

    ReplyDelete
  2. corinna.ah@gmail.comJuly 27, 2015 at 1:14 PM

    Thanks Kim!

    ReplyDelete

Let’s hear from you!