Wedding Gift Idea - Personalized Tile Coasters

I know, the tile coasters craze has probably come and gone. But here's a great twist that really adds some personalization into the coaster idea. My friends Heather and Samir got married two years ago and they had a lovely wedding announcement with a lovely Indian-theme and graphic of a stylized peacock. Long story short, I wanted to make them coasters with that graphic and with their names and wedding date on them. Brilliant, non?

I fixed up the graphic in another program because it was touching some other information that didn't need to be on the coasters. Then I selected the paper and tried to keep some of them more manly-looking, so that if H and S had another couple over, the two men wouldn't have to feel fruity for using girly coasters. I tried to keep them matching and cute. This paper served as a frame for the wedding date info.

To get the center logo with H & S and wedding date, I out-sourced it. Since I don't have a nice printer and Office Depot is pretty cheap anyway, I printed through their online printing service. It's pretty cheap and the paper quality and printing is excellent. You don't have to worry about ink smear if you select the card stock option and their photo printing. And they usually have it ready the next day, if not in the next three hours of placing your order. And you can pay online so all you have to do is show up and get your order, easy as pie!

I carefully cut out the graphic for the center so that it had extra length so it would go under the paper "frames" I cut, without showing tile underneath. But you don't want the bottom-most paper to be too big either, and you want the crease under the frame to be unnoticeable. I think I pulled this off.

Then I mod-podged over them, let it dry and cure for a goodly amount of time, and then *VERY IMPORTANT* hit it with about five light coats of finishing spray. Finishing spray keeps the mod-podge from being sticky and tacky. You don't want to go to all the trouble of making nice looking coasters and then have the paper rip off when you are trying to pull the stack of coasters apart for their first use.

All in all, I think these turned out smashingly!

I love them.

I'm hoping to do some for me and my husband!

Cheers!

Danelle