Monday, December 21, 2009

Homemade Coasters

Let's talk about coasters. :)
You might remember from a couple of months ago when I posted about these super-cute coasters from Becky Higgins.
Well, my sister is moving into a new apartment next month, and she bought new furniture for her living room. Brand spanking new furniture? Talk about needing coasters! :) So I made some for her for Christmas.

I bought the wood squares at Hobby Lobby. I think they were 3/$1.00 if my memory serves. I also bought chocolate brown toll paint. First thing's first, I painted the edges and the under-side.
Then I cut squares of scrapbook paper to the right size.
Next, I mod-podged them onto the wood squares. **NOTE: I used the thicker kind of scrapbook paper (more of a card-stock weight) and it kept soaking the mod podge up and taking forever to dry, because it was kind of spongey....so I would recommend NOT using the more porous card-stock paper when modpodging. Stick to the normal paper-weight scrapbook paper.**I think I added about 4 layers of mod podge over about a 6-day period of time. {Like I said, it was taking FOREVER to dry!} Once the mod podge had dried completely on all sides, I shellacked the heck out of them. The reason I shellacked is because mod podge has the tendency to stay a little tacky. For most projects, that's not a big deal, but I wanted my sister to be able to stack these coasters on top of one another, and I didn't want them to get stuck together and then peel when she tried to pull them apart.

The shallac helped with the tackiness--they are still a BIT sticky, but hopefully it won't harm them.
If you are still looking for a quick gift idea before Christmas, these might be something to try! If you don't use the uber-thick paper, you could have this project done and dried within a couple of days.

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