Memory Coasters - Tutorial

My friend Sherry has been making coasters for presents - she is making them from scratch with polymer clay. They are wonderful but clay and I just don't get along. The other day I was in the dollar store and saw a pack of cork-backed coasters. Hhmmmm ... bet I can do *something* with these! My parents use coasters so I decided to make Memory Coasters - using family photos. But first I had to get rid of those horrible pictures on the coasters.

I gave each coaster a single coat of gesso. The gesso prepares surfaces for paint - might not be necessary on these but can't hurt! You can still see the pictures through the paint. Not my style at all!

When that was dry I gave the coasters a base coat of a light rose color. I just used an acrylic craft paint. My folks are pretty conservative so I used conservative colors but you could go crazy bright with this too. When that was just about dry I took a piece of bubble wrap that I cut in a square and painted it a contrasting color. Then I placed the painted bubble wrap face down on the coaster and just patted the color on. I love using bubble wrap to paint with!

Yeah, I know, it doesn't look so hot, but we're not done! Now we'll tone down the dots. Take a third color and squeeze it onto your palette. Then take a piece of tissue paper and wad it up. Tap the tissue paper into the paint and then tap it onto a piece of paper towel to take a bit of the paint off. Now tap it onto your coaster. Tap until you feel the dots are blended in a bit.

Getting better. One more step for this background. Grab a texture stamp - I have one that is a cube with a different squiggly texture on each side. Now paint a contrasting color onto the stamp and stamp the coaster. Since my stamp was smaller than the coaster I basically divided the coaster into 4 and stamped each section. Clean your stamp immediately - don't let the paint dry on it.

Okay - now just let it dry. See how the dots add depth? Print out your photos (I print onto card stock) and cut them to shape. I used a PVA bookbinding glue to attach my photos to the coasters. Remember that any embellishments need to be flat if you are going to use these as coasters. Meet my folks ....

This one cracks me up .. it's my niece in her car seat wearing her Dad's shoes ...

I guess this is like miniature scrapbooking! To finish these I sprayed them with workable fixatif because I plan to coat them with marine varnish (as soon as I go to the store and buy some). I will probably give them a coat of spray urethane before I paint on the varnish too. I want my Mom to be able to wipe these down - gotta get rid of those coffee cup rings!