DIY Stone Mat

I love the ocean. And I love ocean rocks. I love how smooth they feel and how they smell of sea salt. I especially love heart-shaped rocks and, like my mom, I have a pretty great collection started. 

With so many rocks in decorative buckets and jars that I didn't know what to do with them, I decided to seek out some ideas on Pinterest. And this was what I found! An ocean stone mat!!!! I immediately loved the idea because I love feeling them beneath my feet, so I hastily went and bought the materials. 

Translation: I went to the Dollar Store and found a Welcome mat for $1. They didn't have black which was the only bummer.

I already had the rocks and glue gun, but if you need smooth stones, craft stores and Wal-Mart have them and the Dollar Store even had smooth "river" stones which look different than the ones I used but would have worked fine. Note: You use a heck of a lot of hot glue sticks. Like twenty-five or so, if I were guessing. So stock up if you don't have many!

I chose to do a light to dark pattern for my mat but I could have done it randomly or perhaps made a heart pattern in the middle. I wasted kind of a lot of time placing the stones so they would fit well together, only to have the mat move and mess up my progress, so I would just start in a corner and move across, placing only six to eight at a time before beginning to glue them down. I used a permanent marker to darken the edges of the mat and also around the corners of the rocks as went so the green underneath wouldn't be so noticeable. (Unfortunately, I didn't think to do this until I was more than halfway through.) 

This was my mat when I had gone through all the rocks that I had already. Well, all the ones that worked for this project. Some were too big or too round.

Thankfully, my mom was able to send some at the bottom of her next package!

 Here is the finished product in front of our kitchen sink! I love how it turned out and I love how it feels under my feet!

As you can see! ;)

Let me know what you think of this project or if it's something you would make yourself!
Can you think of a way to improve it?
How many heart-shaped rocks can you spot? (There are more than a dozen in there!)