charming coffee mug coasters - decoupage

Four cork coasters from a 1-euro-shop transformed into something stylish and useful :)
using not much more than some decoupage-adhesive and a coffee-pattern table napkin

Step 1 Material

What I needed:

- Cork coasters (wooden, plastic, glass etc will also do I suppose - only paper & cardboard should be avoided, had only bad experiences with that. The papery structures tend to soak the adhesive too much, and the coasters tend to bend concave or convexly and they also tend to stick when stacked!)
- (Nice pattern of a fitting size from a) table napkin (I needed 2 for 4 coasters but you might need less - reason follows in the steps)
- Acrylic white paint + brush (to undercoat)
- Scissors
- Decoupage adhesive
- some patience (each coat dries in 1-2 hours. Mine needed 4 coats in total)

That's about all - ready to begin!

Comments

[coffeemugrack]

really cool project! Came out good too. I will share this with users of my coffee mug rack site.. thanks

[morCadillac]

Thanks!
Glad it turned out good.
Feel free to link to this instructable.

[PMSandaGun]

Love this project... I'm just getting ready to try this now, so thanks! as for air bubbles and wrinkles, I watched someone else do this...what they did is spread a small amount of adhesive on a small part of the substrate, laid the napkin on, and then brushed on the adhesive a little bit at a time, smoothing the napkin over the coated part as she went...I'm having enough trouble with things that aren't tissue, lol, so hope this helps!

[delboy1203]

The other option here is to just glue 4 more round cork coasters to the bottom of the decorated ones. Less fiddly if you chubby fingers like mine!

[lisa4peace]

I really like this project! I was wondering if you could use photographs and if so, what would the process be?

[Goodhart]

An idea that might work would be to take the photos (I assume you mean the type rendered from film), and scan them into the computer (IF you have a color photo printer) and print them off under the photo setting but not on photo paper, but print rather on regular printing paper. Although the quality might not be as good, they would be thinner and easier to handle, as per the instructions above.

[Creativeman]

Nice project, and very practical! I saw sunglasses/faces, esp. in the thumbnails. I have done this using cardboard and paper....sealed with acrylic varnish...seems to resist some moisture and nothing lasts forever!

[silverchakra]

These are great! In the small pics I thought they were faces of some kind! Very cool! Thanks for sharing!

[Ninth]

I thought so too, they looked like tribal faces of some kind, and they sort of scared me :) Good instructable though!

[canida]

They look great!

[morCadillac]

Thanks a lot!
I've noticed I'm also admiring some of your work ;)
Eda

[canida]

Thanks! Cute seal icon, btw.

[morCadillac]

^_ thanks!

[GorillazMiko]

Nice job! They actually look like faces in the end. :P Nice job once again!

[morCadillac]

Thanks, Miko!
Well, never seen it that way but indeed they do! :) Not very pretty faces, though.. :P

Your soldering help unit ("helping hands") is also a very nice project, one of those simple but useful ideas, well done! I'd probably never think of that!

Loves,
Eda