Simple Coasters

    

     One of my amazing girlfriends made us the sweetest coasters part of our christmas gift. They were tiles mod podged with some of our family photos. She just went on face book, printed a few of her favorites, and away she went! These are my favorite kinds of gifts. Personal, original, and full of love.

     After raving about how much I loved them, she gave me some extra tiles she found at the habitat re-building center so I could try my hand at making my own. They are an adorable turquoise that looks a bit retro, yet totally modern at the same time. You will have to trust me on the color part. All my photos make them look blue.

     I had some leftover scrap book paper (also from Sarah) from an earlier project, so I decided to throw the trendy pennant banner look onto the coaster. When I grow tired of this style I am not worried about re-purposing, or good-willing these bad boys. The total cost of this project was FREE!!! Gifted tiles, little bitty scraps of scrap book paper, mod podge that I already had on hand, a sharpie, and some sealant borrowed from a friend (do I even need to say this friend was also Sarah). I have not put cork on the bottom yet because I am still trying to find my cork in my crazy craft closet. I may have to just do the ol' hot glue and felt trick. My grandmothers coasters always have had green felt on the bottom. I may do that for nostalgia.

       There are many tutorials out there that recommend baking your ceramics when you use sharpies on them. I used a navy blue sharpie to draw the "string" that my triangles are hanging off. In my limited  research, it seems that you actually have to get somewhere in the 900F range to make anything stick. So I just used one layer mod podge over the ink, used a tiny dab of m.p. on the tip of a paint brush to pick up the triangles of paper and drop them onto the tile, followed with three layers of mod podge and some finishing gloss spray. Don't stack them on top of each other for a couple of days. I did and I got dents and scratches in them. I laid them out on a table to really cure up and no more bumps and bruises for these guys. So far so good. They have even passed the spilt coffee test.

     There is really no exact pin or blog post that this was inspired by. I would say it was inspired by my friend Sarah.

Sara's pin boards!

     I think the gifted photo ones are moving upstairs to our night stands where we (grown ups) will use them every day. These guys will stay downstairs where they can be beat up by a toddler and we won't care!

     Give it a try if you have some tiles laying around. It was super quick and my little helper had a blast pretending with a dry paintbrush and a scrap of paper.