Recycled Tile Coasters

As part of her Stashbusting Crusade, Robin from the T-Shirt Diaries invited me to write a guest post! Spring is a great time for stashbusting/purging/cleaning!  Just in case you missed it, here are the coasters I made!

Today I'm busting some ceramic tiles from my stash.  I bought them at ReStore for $0.20 a piece with the intention of making coasters as gifts at Christmas time.  Then I wanted to get them done for my friend's birthday in February. Now it's April....

I started with these tiles.  I love going to ReStore because they have so much neat stuff at good prices.  It's nice to know that all these construction materials are being saved from the garbage!

Next I found some images I liked over at the Graphics Fairy.  I've talked about Karen's site many times before - if you haven't checked it out, why not?!

I picked 4 images I liked and resized them in a word document and placed them how I liked.  I did a test run on plain paper to make sure they were the right size and in the right position.

Once I was happy with how they printed I did a good copy onto some old book pages - also from my stash.  I had received these dictionary pages from another crafty mind years ago when she was trying to de-stash!  

After I was done printing my images I trimmed them down to size for my coasters.

Next step was mod podge! I bought the outdoor stuff just to make sure that it held up against the moisture from glasses.  

I used my trusted mod podge gift card to make sure there weren't any air bubbles under the paper.

Once that dried, I applied one coat of 'podge to cover the paper too.  I usually use a regular paint brush to apply mod podge because I don't like the little foam brushes.  I'm apparently too violent and break the little plastic thing on the inside all the time.  I realize that using bristle brushes leaves brush strokes, but I've come to peace with it.

After they were dry I was ready to call it done.  The outdoor mod podge however left them feeling tacky, and when you set a glass on them, it stuck.  I found a clear sealer spray and gave them two coats of this, which fixed the problem!

Here's where I have a confession to make.  I had to *gasp* SHOP to finish this project.  I know, it goes against the rules of stashbusting, but I ONLY bought what I needed, and I figured that the buying to busting ratio was more than reasonable, so I figured I could forgive myself.

I picked up a bunch of these little guys:

I know I could have busted even more stash by cutting up some felt or something similar to put on the bottom, but I really wanted them to have that professional, polished look.

I applied one to each corner like so

Voila!

Reach into your stash and grab a ribbon to tie around them and they're ready to give to your bestie as a belated Chris-birth-gift!  Total cost = $3.01 (not including printer ink/mod podge/sealer)  This gift recipient reads my blog.  Thank goodness she loves a great deal as much as I do! :P

One set down, a box of tiles to go!

Time to head back over to the Graphics Fairy!