Growing in Unity - Day 4
Hello Unity Friends! Welcome to day four of my Growing in Unity week for Unity Stamp Company. I'm excited to share another project with you all. Don't forget to comment each day for a chance to win one of two $20 Unity gift credits. The two winners will be randomly selected from the comments at the end of this week.
Today I'm sharing a set of coasters I made for my mom using my Unity stamps and some 4" x 4" travertine tiles from the home improvement store. Here's a photo of the finished product in use, but I have some in-process photos too. Pretty cool, right?
So literally YEARS ago I bought a package of 9 tumbled travertine tiles from the home improvement store to make coasters. And they sat in the garage on a shelf - like I said, for years. And then they somehow found their way up to my craft room (I think my husband got sick of seeing them in the garage and asking me if I was ever going to use them). I had even bought a black StazOn ink pad and StazOn stamp cleaner with this project in mind. And still the un-opened package of tiles sat on the shelf intimidating me for whatever reason. I don't know what finally got me to give the project a try, but I did it!
First I wiped each tile off with a damp cloth because they're pretty dusty right out of the package. Once dry I took a look at what I had, noticing how porous they are, and what stamps I wanted to use. It took some time to figure out the layout that would work best with the nature of each tile. And then I went for it! I mounted my stamps on acrylic blocks, inked up each stamp with the black StazOn ink, had one chance to get it right since they are too thick to fit into my Misti, stamped, and then immediately cleaned off each stamp as I went with the StayzOn cleaner so as not to ruin any of my Unity stamps! I was pretty pleased with the results.
After I left the ink on the stamped tiles to dry (I left them over night) I came back and used a foam brush to brush on a thin coating of Mod Podge Matte over the tops and sides to seal in the designs. I left them to dry and then brushed on a second coat. I cut some felt squares slightly smaller than my coasters, took them out to the driveway, and used some Elmer's Craft Bond spray adhesive to adhere the felt to the bottoms of the coasters to protect any wooden surfaces from getting scratched up by the coasters.
After they were dry, I realized the edges around the outside of the felt remained very tacky from the spray adhesive. I grabbed the little bottle of baby powder I keep in my craft room and went around the edges, smoothing on a little of the powder with my finger - problem solved!
Below are the finished coasters! I think they turned out pretty well for a first attempt and having to kind of plan out my stamp placement based on the porosity of the individual tiles. The stamp sets I used below, starting at the top left corner:
- Wine Bottle & Sit Back & Relax - these may be discontinued as I couldn't seem to find them?
- Summer Drinks from Hello Summer Itty Bitty
And below is the set of coasters all tied up with ribbon for gifting. Also I included a photo of my mom's gift: the set of coasters, the set of gift card envelopes (from Tuesday's post), as well as a set of cards I made and packaged up! It all looks pretty snazzy in a box with some basket filler and tied up with some pretty ribbon.
Thanks for stopping by and checking out my project today! Cheers!
