DIY Monogram Coasters from Tiles

It's Week 4 of the Dare to DIY party over at Newlywoodwards. This week our challenge was to create a homemade gift.

We usually try to give handmade gifts whenever we have ideas for making something ourselves. All of Lover's siblings are grown and married, and my brothers are quickly reaching the point where they're able to simply buy whatever they want for themselves. It makes Christmas shopping a little difficult, so we try to give handmade things that will at least have some sentimental value. Of course, we make sure that they're something useful, so we're not cluttering up their home with junk like I mentioned in this post.

Last Christmas I bookmarked this idea of DIY coasters from tiles. The original idea I found actually decoupaged photos to tiles for displaying them in your home. I've also seen many variations of using the tiles as coasters, and I decided to do my own take.

I liked the idea of painting a simple monogram onto the tile and then adding some felt feet to make them coasters.

I found boxes of 4"x4" travertine tiles at Lowe's. They're a really light neutral tan color, which I thought would be pretty in everybody's home. The boxes were about $5 for 9 tiles, so the projects was shaping up to be very inexpensive.

I wiped each tile off with a damp cloth to remove the tile dust. Then I printed out the first letter of the siblings names onto computer paper, and cut out each letter. I traced around the letter onto the tile, using the paper as a sort of reverse stencil.

If you have really steady hands you could handpaint the letter in. I don't, and I wanted to keep things simple, so I used a paint pen in a deep brown to color in the letters. I've always enjoyed coloring, so this part was really fun. :-)

When the paint was completely dry, I took all the tiles down to the basement. I flipped them all onto their backs and sprayed them with a light coat of acrylic sealer (also from Lowes) I let that dry for about half an hour, then flipped them back over and sprayed the fronts. The sealer makes the tile waterproof, protects the painted monogram, and keeps the tile from getting its dust all over everything.

I let them air out down in the basement for about two days, until they didn't stink like sealer anymore. :0) The last step was to take miniature felt circles and stick one to each corner. This protects each tile from the other, and also your fab table!

Pretty packaging is just as important as the gift itself. I tied each set of four coasters together with a pretty ribbon, and placed each set into tins that I found that were the perfect size. The total cost of the project was about$15 for four sets of coasters and about two hours total. Not bad!

Be sure to check out all the other fabulous projects this week at Kim's!

Linked to DIY Day @ A Soft Place to Land