MEXICO – Step into Tina Payton’s house on Roxbury Road and it’s like walking into a rug museum.

There are muted-color rugs on floors, on walls, in chairs and tables. And then there are the large rug-hooked dolls, all done in primitive – not detailed – style. That’s the method she likes best.

The two-story gray house on Route 17 where the Rumford Tri-County Mental Health office manager lives with her husband is where she runs her rug-hooking business, Payton Primitives.

For the past two years, it’s been a Web-based business. Now Payton wants to branch out into the community, offering a two-day open house to hold demonstrations, offer kits for sale, and display her work, which has been copyrighted and featured in national magazines.

“I hope to introduce people to the art of rug hooking,” she said Wednesday. “I’ve been right here in good ol’ Mexico, Maine, and no one knows about me.”

She’s also booked the Mexico town hall, where next Saturday’s open house will be held, to teach a five-week course in the art of rug-hooking. It starts Sunday, April 29, and will be held on the following four Sundays.

“That will be enough to do a small project, and enough to teach somebody how to get started. If there’s enough interest, I may do more. I used to do classes in my home, but it was too problematic,” Payton said.

She got hooked on the art in 1997 when she saw a rug at a Lisbon shop.

“I fell in love with it right away,” she said.

Then, during a family vacation to Pennsylvania, she met a highly skilled woman Payton called a “guru-like rug hooker.” That drove her desire even more.

“When I came back, I was on a mission to find instruction,” she said. Through a girlfriend, she found a teacher in Lewiston and, when that class ended, she found another teacher in Brunswick.

“Over time, a group of us formed in this area, so now there are a lot more in the area who are hooking,” Payton said.

She only uses 100 percent wool fabric cut into strips and makes table runners, wall hangings, chair pads, dolls, and even paints her patterns on sap buckets.

“It’s a very, very simple technique. The nice thing about rug hooking is that usually I’ll sit in a chair, watch TV and I’ll hook. If I get interrupted, I don’t lose my place. And I can socialize and visit with friends while doing it,” Payton said.

The October issue of Create and Decorate featured a four-page spread of Payton’s primitive-style designs done in a rug, a bag and a sap bucket. It also profiled her and solicited one of her Heritage Snow Angel projects.

“When I got featured, I was floored. Then I found out they were going to pay me. You just don’t know what doors will open. It’s been interesting. It can be pretty time-consuming, but it’s a great, great hobby,” Payton said.

She did one rug in memory of her mother, Lorette (Martineau) Tonolini, who died of muscular dystrophy at the age of 39 in 1975, and another for a girlfriend, Nancy, who died of cancer.

Payton credits her mother with giving her artisan skills.

“If she were alive today, she’d be right here hooking with me,” she said.