Quickest, easiest, cheapest Christmas gift yet

This years Christmas gift to everyone was so quick and easy to make and so inexpensive I almost feel bad.  Almost ;)

We decided to do welcome mats with a twist.  I had wanted to make the mats all pretty with the house number of each gift recipient on it. That Guy, being an avid gamer, was inspired by the ENTER key on our computer keyboard.  It was hard, but I had admit his idea was better than mine. 

First we had to find the mats.  I found some on the IKEA website, but couldnt be sure I could get to an IKEA soon enough (there is not one in our city or even any surrounding cities.  Going to IKEA is a day trip for us).  I found some on the Canadian Tire website that I was pretty happy with, but when I got to Canadian Tire all available mats were too dark in colour. Since I will be adding black spray paint they had to be a light colour to best contrast. Then we found exactly the right mat at..... Dollarama! For $2.50 I found just the right colour mat that was in stock and available. 

Just the right door mat

Next we took a piece of scrap cardboard that was headed to recycling and cut it to be the same size as our mat. 

We printed the word Enter in the font we liked best and taped it to the cardboard

"Enter"

Because I lack any and all artistic ability I had That Guy cut the word in the cardboard along with the lines that would suggest a 3D key. He did this with an Xacto knife.

All cut out

Then we took the template and the mat outside and spray painted the negative image.  I used a heavy duty black Rust-oleum product for this purpose.

Spray paint is so much fun!!

Remove your template and let dry. 

Taa-daa!!

Sometimes I remember back to my pre-frugal days.  If someone had given me $3 and asked me to make a family Christmas gift I would have thought they were nuts.  Just goes to show its totally possible!!