Personalized Pita Door Mat {Tutorial}

May 3, 2020May 22, 2020 acraftyarab Plaid Ambassador, Ramadan Crafts

I made this personalized pita door mat to bring a bit of humor to Ramadan and COVID19 quarantine iftr* food deliveries.

I have seen similar ones online for different national fares, like pizza or tacos, or drinks like coffee.

Since our home has hummus, labneh, and sharmoula in the refrigerator 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and maybe some in the freezer too, what we seem to run out of most during our Ramadan suhoor* meals is pita bread.

Rather than expose our family to the grocery store, we have been having the pita bread come to us. To help our favorite local restaurants, we have been placing delivery orders online for our iftr dinner a few nights a week and asking for extra pita bread. This door mat is a good reminder to make sure the most important part of their delivery drop off is also included.

**Iftr and suhoor are the two major meals eaten by Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan. The suhoor meal is eaten before sunrise, while the iftr meal is eaten at sunset. No food or water is allowed to enter the body, during the day, between those meals. However, once the iftr meal is taken, you may eat and drink all you want until the suhoor meal is over, when a human eye can see the color difference between a white piece of thread and a black one.

I received some of these supplies as part of my role as Plaid Ambassador.

Supplies

I stared by taking out all the insides of the stencils of the letters I wanted. I laid them out on the mat to figure out how much space I would need.

I traced out and cut a few of the letters I would need twice. I will not be using these for the rest of the project, but it helps to take this extra step to get a visual of the overall placement.

Once I was happy with the look, I started with my larger letters, carefully placing the stencil over the cut out letter, removing the letter, then stencil the open space. It is better to load your brush with paint, next use an up and down motion, rather than use strokes, to get the paint in between the door mat fibers.

When it was time to work on the smaller letters, I found it helpful to tape down every other, so that they were lined up, then go back and stencil the letter that was in between. For example, here, I finished the Y and the U, let them dry, then came back to do the O.

I let my mat dry fully for 24 hours before I moved it. Don’t forget, there should be paint soaking all the way through, so even if the top appears dry, it may still need time to cure. Once outside, the color should last for six months, or longer with touch ups.