As far as pintrest goes I am officially addicted. I have also recruited others some days I feel great about that and other days well I feel like I am responsible for them spending countless hours in front of their computer doing a whole lot of pinning and not much of anything else. I will admit that there are not that many things that I have actually done from my pins. I think I am probably at 5 out of a thousand:
· Scrabble tile coasters
· Homemade laundry soap
· Homemade hand soap
· Branch art
Oh wow did I say 5 I meant 4… In my defense I have cooked a lot of recipes, I have been off grid for a few months and I am aware that I never posted anything about our new year’s and regifting party but we did make everything from recipes that I discovered on pintrest. Anyway when I saw Hi Sugarplum’s pintrest challenge I thought that I should get out some of the pictures that I have been taking as I was doing projects lately and actually um, post about them. I have been really frugal lately and I have been trying to only do projects that I already have all of the elements for without purchasing anything. Between the wedding and the leftovers from the vow scrabble tile art I did (more on this later) I had everything I needed except felt. I found three dollars in my change jar and went to town, and by town I mean Joann’s.
Supplies
· Stiff felt
· Scrabble tiles in the appropriate combination to make the words you want
· A friend or in my case a husband to brainstorm words with you
· Glue I used that super effective but stinky E5000 glue I am sure you could use hot glue too
· Spray poly in semi gloss
As this is a pintrest challenge in the spirit of full disclosure as mimicry is the highest form of flattery I happened across these coasters on pintrest. I immediately loved them , as I love scrabble and I used tiles in my wedding. They are sentimental as well. While I love Esty and I have supported many artisans from there, I was not completely happy with these. I could do this myself, I could use tiles from my wedding J, I did not like all the words that they used, mainly oily which in context of a drink frankly grosses me out, even though I am sure this relates to some glorious alcoholic beverage that I am unaware of it makes me think of that commercial that is talking about how advertising can make anything look good, it looks like they are poring a tall glass of iced ginger ale and as the camera goes wider you see that it is motor oil, yuck! Second was diet, I am hypo glycemic and it is really bad for me to have fake sugar, it kind of wacks me out, kind of like margarine it does not compete with butter at all, I would rather have less and have the real thing.
Back to the project, I started by forming the coasters out of words I liked that pertained to drinks each set has 4 coasters and all have a theme of sorts. Be aware that the tiles are not square they are rectangle. After I figured out all of the words and had my groups I cut my felt and then I began to glue. Online there are a lot of tutorials for this but what I found works best is to first glue the top row and then glue the left and glue out the rest insuring that they stay straight. The reason I picked the stinky glue (make sure you have great ventilation when using this stuff) is it remains plyable for a long time after it is applied to the surface so if you have to adjust you can.
When it came to sealing I also went away from the norm, many people leave them unsealed besides what is already there. I tried this for a while but I saw some water rings forming and as that is what coasters are to prevent it was too much. Some people covered in modpodge but as soon as that got damp from condensation it would become glue like again. Others yet used poly some made pretty thick coats that actually added stability as it sealed all the cracks but it had too much of a Joe’s Crab Shack feel for me. I went with six thin coats of poly acrylic in semi gloss and this is what I got.
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