Fashion For The Home: DIY Leather Belt Floormat [Gal About Town: Fashion and Travel at your Fingertips]

I hope you all have been busy searching stores and the interwebs for fun and funky steampunk accents for your home these last two weeks. Time does fly fast!  I had a great time working on this week’s blog, and I hope you all enjoy it too! This week we will go through, step-by-step, how to make your own leather belt floor mat.

1) Gather your supplies: You’ll want to check out a few thrift stores to buy your belts. If you plan your visit right, go when the belts are most discounted, and you can get them for less than $1 each. I recommend buying 15-20 belts, depending on the size you want to make your floor mat. The more interesting the pattern or texture of the belt, the better. But make sure you get a few plain ones too as filler. This will give your mat a more interesting look.

Additionally you will need:

Sharp Scissors

Exacto Knife

Shoe Barge (shoe glue: I like to use Barge, or Goop)

Ruler

Felt (Get a color that will go with the belts-this will be your base to the mat)

Chalk or a marker (to mark the felt and leather for cutting)

Some heavy books to help flatten the leather

Paper towels or wet ones for clean up

2) Sort out your belts: Once you have all of your belts together you might find that one or two just don’t fit in with the rest of them, just set those aside for now,  they might make for good filler.

3) Cut off the buckles: Make sure you get as close to the buckle as you can so you have as much leather to work with as possible.

OR, if you’re like me and fell in love with a few of the belts, make a belt bracelet (which works for guys and gals alike) like this below just buy cutting the belt to measure around your wrist. Also, if your belts won’t lay flat, place some books on top of them for a day to help flatten them out.

4) Prep your felt: Mark the felt using your ruler and chalk or marker for how big you want the mat to be. I made mine to be 18×27. Cut it out with sharp scissors. Take your time, you want the edge to be crisp and straight.

5) Pick a layout: Layout the belts to see which widths match up and then which ones look better together. Think about what kind of layout you want. Do you want it to have a tile effect? Chevron? Just a simple straight across look? There are many possibilities, but since I have hardwood floors, I went with a layout that would compliment the wood.

Once you have your layout planned, start cutting. You can either use your scissors or exacto knife to cut the leather to the desired length. Cut and place each piece of leather where you want it to fit on the mat. I suggest going piece by piece, row by row until you have every piece layed out.

6) Glue it:  Make sure you are working in a well ventilated area with plenty of paper towels or wet ones in case of a glue accident. Apply the glue one piece at a time. Once you’ve applied the glue, replace the piece to the mat, press firmly for 15 seconds before moving on to the next piece. Keep doing this until every piece has been glued down flat.

And VOILA! You have a beautiful new floor mat!

Make sure there is no excess goop oozing out of the leather anywhere. Then place a few books on top of the mat again to make sure the leather lays completely flat on the felt. Once the leather is dried to the felt, flip the mat over, and with your exacto knife, trim any edges that have gone over the felt. Now you can enjoy your floor mat, or take it a step further and continue embellishing with metallic studs. Also, any scrap leather & felt you have left over can be made into some dapper beverage coasters, place mats, etc. The possibilities are endless!

Now Boldly Go!