DIY Aisle Runner

One of the challenges of getting married outside is the need to create a "wedding space" so that the venue looks like a wedding is going to take place there. Tom and I are renting chairs for our guests to sit in, and eventually a wedding arch will be decorated for us to get married under, all that was left was an aisle for me to walk on, or rather, to protect my ivory dress from dragging across the ground. So, an aisle runner was in need. We happen to have an aisle runner kicking around the basement from a previous wedding, and I saw some pictures of hand-painted aisle runners online, so I decided to give it a try. I already had a monogram on my computer that I made for my unity candle, so I blew it up and printed it out. It printed on four pages that I had to tape together. The next step was to place the computer print out under the aisle runner. According to directions I saw online, I was supposed to trace the design out with a pencil, but this turned out to be a bit of a pain, so I went ahead and traced with paint. I used acrylic paint and several different sized brushes. The project is actually quite easier than it looks, it just requires a lot of patience to wait for the paint to dry. Once I finished the lettering, I decided to add a border in order to incorporate both of my wedding colors. Once everything was dry, I took the computer print out from under the aisle runner. It looked pretty good at that point, but I really liked how it looked with the white of the paper showing through under the monogram. So, once the paint was completely dry, I flipped the whole thing over, and painted the back of the monogram with ivory paint. I let this dry over night, and then sprayed the whole thing with spray varnish, to protect the paint from people walking over it. I am really impressed with how my aisle runner came out, when my step-father first saw it,  he thought that I had it professionally printed. I am still contemplating whether or not I want to paint something going down the length of the aisle.