Under the Sea Moodmat
A melting underwater cartoon scene in heavy black outline, printed edge to edge on eight inches square of recycled rubber. Art by Born Ready Designs, hand numbered run of forty.
The Print
Everything Down Here Is Falling Apart
The mermaid takes the right half of the mat and she is the reason the piece works. Long red hair, a purple shell top, and a face that has given up on structure. The cheeks and jaw sag downward like wet clay, the mouth hangs open and loose, and the two eyes do not agree with each other at all, one yellow and one blue, at different heights and different sizes. A fat tear sits partway down one cheek. A drool string runs off the bottom lip and keeps going. She is not sad and she is not scary, she is just extremely far gone.
Her company is no better. A yellow and blue striped fish hangs in the water beside her with a single bulging bloodshot eye taking up most of its head and a lit joint held in its mouth, smoke coming off the end. A small red crab peers in from the top left corner with both claws up, the only figure on the mat still trying to hold a normal expression. White bubbles drift through every gap in the composition, and the whole scene sits on a deep royal blue that reads almost black in low light.
The drawing is heavy black outline and flat saturated color, no gradients and no shading, which is the right approach for screen printing on reclaimed rubber. Registration is clean, the outlines land where they should, and the color is dense rather than washed. There is no UV in it. It is a straight standard ink print on an eight inch square, and it earns its place on how thoroughly it wrecks a familiar looking cartoon rather than on any lighting trick.
Designed By
Born Ready Designs
The back of the mat carries the studio’s mark, BORN READY DESIGNS set in dripping horror lettering, next to the moodmats wordmark, with a number box inked in by hand underneath. That is the whole of what the piece tells us about who made it, and it is enough. The drawing style, all heavy line and flat color and a total commitment to the grotesque, is consistent across everything of theirs we have handled.
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On Video
See It In Hand
Photos only get you so far. This is the actual piece, shot in our hands, so you can see the scale, the finish and how it behaves in real light before you buy it.
Made in New Jersey Since 2009
Rubber That Already Had a First Life
Moodmats started with scraps from old wetsuits and discarded scuba and surf neoprene, material that was headed straight for a landfill. That became Lava Rubber, and Lava Rubber is what every Moodmat is cut from. The feedstock now comes from wetsuits, gaskets, weatherstripping, seat molds, and other clean scrap that gets collected or donated. More than two tons of it moves through the New Jersey shop every month, gets pressed into sheet stock, then die-cut and screen printed. Keeping that material out of the ground has been the point from day one.
Closed-Cell Neoprene
Closed-cell rubber does not drink up what you spill on it. Water, reclaim, and terp splash sit on the surface instead of soaking in, so a wipe with soapy water puts it back to new.
It Stays Put
The rubber grips whatever it is sitting on and grips whatever you set on top. A rig that would skate across a glass table or a finished desk stops moving the second it lands on a Moodmat.
Tough and Self-Extinguishing
Heat resistant, self-extinguishing, and built out of material that already survived a first life. This is not a printed coaster that curls after a month on the table.
Where People Actually Put These
It Does Not Have to Hold a Rig
A Moodmat protects a surface and grips what sits on it. Whether that thing is a banger, a camera, or nothing at all is up to you. They are called Moodmats for a reason. Pick the one that matches how you feel and put it wherever it belongs.
Rig and Glass Pad
The job it was built for. Keeps glass off hard surfaces and keeps hard surfaces off your glass.
Display Surface
Figures, models, controllers, dice, cameras, watches. Anything worth setting on something intentional.
Wall Art
Plenty of these never touch a table. Hang it, frame it, or pin it behind the setup and let the print do the work.
Desk and Everyday
Trivet for hot pans, landing spot for keys, pad under a pet bowl, cushion on a camp table.
Why It Matters
Runs End. Prints Do Not Come Back.
Moodmats print in runs, and runs end. Once a design is out, it is out. Artist collabs and drop exclusives regularly land in quantities of ten to twenty five pieces, which is why the people who collect these track drops, trade them, and frame the ones they will never put a rig on. If this specific print matters to you, the time to grab it is while it is still on the shelf.
Forty Made, Numbered by Hand
Forty is the entire production for this design. The back is screened with the studio mark and the moodmats wordmark and then hand inked with a number out of forty, which is a person with a pen rather than a print run counter. We quote the run size and not the figure inside it, because that figure changes from piece to piece and we would rather tell you what we know. What we know is that there are forty and we have one.
No Reprints
Moodmats does not go back and run a sold-out design again. When this one is gone from our shelf and theirs, the only way to get it is from somebody who already has one.
Worth Hanging
A print this limited does not have to earn its keep under a rig. Plenty of these end up on a wall, in a frame, or stacked with the rest of a collection.
The Details
Specs and Care
| Size | 8 by 8 inches, approximate |
| Shape | Square, art bleeds off all four sides |
| Material | 100% upcycled closed-cell rubber, Lava Rubber stock |
| Screen printed, full color, standard ink | |
| UV | None. Standard ink only |
| Artist | Born Ready Designs |
| Edition | Run of 40, hand numbered on the back |
| Origin | Made in New Jersey, USA |
Wipe it down with warm water and a little dish soap, then let it air dry flat. That is the whole routine. Do not run it through a washing machine or a dryer, do not scrub the print with an abrasive pad, and do not rest a lit torch or a glowing-hot banger directly on the surface. Use a stand or a puck for anything still at temperature.
Straight Talk
Know Before You Buy
Upcycled Means Variation
The rubber is reclaimed scrap, so base color, speckle, and surface texture shift slightly from sheet to sheet. Two mats of the same design will not be photocopies of each other. That is how you know it is the real material and not virgin stock.
Heat Resistant, Not Heatproof
The rubber is self-extinguishing and handles warm gear without complaint. It is not a torch pad. Park anything still glowing on a proper stand or a quartz puck, not on the print.
No UV on This One
Standard ink, full color, no reactive application anywhere in the print. A blacklight does nothing to it. Plenty of Moodmats do light up and this is not one of them, and we would rather say that now than have you plug in a lamp and wonder what went wrong.
Full Bleed Means a Thin Border
The art runs off all four sides, so the black rubber shows only as a narrow frame around the print rather than as a wide margin. It is a clean square, not a die cut, so the footprint is uniform. Expect the edge of the print to sit close to the edge of the mat, because that is how it was made.
This Is the Exact Mat You Get
One of these is on the shelf and the photos are of that piece, front and back, so what you see is what ships. We do not publish the hand inked figure on the back. The rubber underneath is reclaimed scrap, so base speckle shifts sheet to sheet even inside the same run.
Set the Mood
Recycled rubber, made in the USA, printed with art worth looking at. Free shipping on orders over $75, and every order ships from a veteran-owned small business.
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