A long time ago the car shop got me a fender cover so that when I worked on my firebird, I could put my tools and parts there without scratching the fender. I was looking at my collection of capacitors, screws, wires, etc etc and thought a lot of this stuff could scratch a nice table. Maybe sparkfun can make the same kind of thing to protect my dining room table with their logo on it, that can be folded up when I was done.
nice idea. a red one with SFE logo would be nice.
heres a plain one:
You just need a paradigm shift… When i work on my Jeep, I just throw my tools on the fender, since it’s already scratched up from the trails anyways 
Though stylized anti-static mats would definitely be a cool idea! Make work areas that much more interesting!
Let me add to that the idea that for a lot of our homes, our rooms with the best lighting, tend to be the rooms with the best furniture.