HOCUS POCUS DOORMAT

Prepare yourself for another post in our Crafty Chaos series...

Kaitlyn and I really enjoy Hocus Pocus. So much that we decided to decorate her porch in a Hocus Pocus theme, beginning with a doormat featuring the iconic witchy hair silhouettes. 

We started with a blank coir mat (perfect for painting on). Kaitlyn bought her 18x30 inch coir doormat at Home Depot for about $11.00. 

Our design for the mat was created in Cricut Design Space, using svgs we purchased on Etsy. As we were doing several Hocus Pocus projects, we bought a collection of Hocus Pocus svgs on Etsy, to provide some versatility. Usually I would provide a link to the specific ones we purchased, but unfortunately the Etsy shop we purchased the svgs from has since closed! However, there are some similar Hocus Pocus svg collections or individual images available on Etsy from other shops. Depending on your project - or projects - I'm sure you can find the perfect fit for your crafting needs too! 

We debated creating our stencil out of vinyl or mylar. As Kaitlyn is not a fan of using large pieces of vinyl (she claims she lacks the proper skillset and I can attest she does get rather testy when working on projects with larger pieces of vinyl), we opted for mylar. Because the doormat and one of our other projects was wider than 12 inches, we ordered a pack of 12x24 inch mylar sheets on Amazon.

Since the mat is larger than the 12x24 inch mylar sheets, we still ended up cutting out the stencil in pieces. The words "I Smell Children" was a single stencil, and then we did each hair silhouette separately, to make it easy to reposition, if we decided to move them around once we were working with the actual mat.

We began with the 'I Smell Children' stencil on the bottom of the mat.

We used a ruler to make sure that the saying was even along the bottom and on the sides of the mat.

We then taped down the stencil to keep it from moving - we used painters tape. Please not this wasn't enough to truly prevent it from going anywhere - it helped, but we learned you still need to be careful not to bump the stencil. We picked up a few bottles of Anita's Outdoor Paint (in black) at Hobby Lobby at the cost of $1.09 each and a pack of foam sponge dabber brushes (we got ours at Walmart, but you can pick them up almost anywhere with craft paint). At this point, we were ready to paint! 

It ended up taking a lot more paint than we originally thought it would. We actually originally started with one bottle of paint, but learned it takes a pretty heavy coat to really cover all the fibers. In the end, it took between 2-3 bottles of the paint to finish this project. Once we finished dabbing our paint on, we carefully removed the stencil from the mat.

We decide to stencil Winnie's hair first - the center silhouette - so we'd have a better idea of where to place Mary's and Sarah's hair on either side.

From here, we repeated the same process with each stencil - determined placement (measuring things out with a ruler as needed), taped down the stencil and dabbed paint onto the mat. TIP: Go around the edge of the hair silhouette and then fill in the shape.

Once the mat was dry, we finished off by spraying clear Flex Seal on the mat. When we did this project it was a nice warm day, so we put the doormat outside in the sunshine to help it dry faster. Someone who shall remain nameless (*cough* Kaitlyn *cough*) forgot the sprinklers turn on earlier in September than the month prior and failed to bring the mat inside early enough...so the mat got wet before the Flex Seal had time to cure. There are now little white balls on the mat, which we are assuming are from the sealer, since they weren't there before. If you are someone who likes to let projects dry outside, please think about your sprinklers and check the weather to see if it's going to rain!

Overall, even with our sprinkler hiccup, I think this Hocus Pocus doormat turned out really cute and is perfect for a Halloween porch - and what better year to make a Hocus Pocus doormat than this year (yay for movie sequels!)?, Kaitlyn is already talking about trying another mat out next year with a Harry Potter theme! (Maybe this time she'll remember to bring in the mat before her sprinkler turn on!)

Stay tuned for more Hocus Pocus projects!

Let me know how your doormat turns out and what quote or movie theme you use!

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