Want a drink? Take a coaster.

Do you use coasters in your house? We haven’t in the past, but with all the painting of furniture we’ve been doing I thought we should start.
I bought these photo coasters a few years ago, but never took them out of the box. I purchased them through ABC Distributing, but you can find them at JoAnn’s, Michael’s, or even Wal-mart. You just have to look around.

(Sorry I started this project late last night…bad lighting)
To make the initials, I used a font I like and played around with it until it was the size I liked. I then printed and cut them out.

Took apart the coasters.

I used Dark Fig by Valspar with a dry-brush technique to paint the frames. Dark Fig is a really dark chocolately brown. Can you believe spell check doesn’t think “chocolately” is a word??? It is a word! I made it a word!
 
Aren’t they just pretty in all their chocolate glory?
As for the initials, I didn’t like the white paper against the brown, so what is a girl to do? Bring out the tea bags…that’s what!
After making a fresh pot of tea, I broke apart the tea bags and poured or more like squished the tea grounds into a plastic container, filled with water. In went the “R’s” to soak. The amount of time you leave them in would depend on how creamy colored you want your paper. You could use coffee grounds, but since we’re not big coffee drinkers…I used what I had.


I left mine soak for about 2 hours, then pulled them out to dry.

This rack from my microwave worked really well. I put a paper towel below to catch any drips.

Here you can see the difference in color.

What do you think?? I’m excited to start using them. Crimson beat me to it, though. I went to the computer to post this, walked back in the dining room and what was on the table?

Oh well, that’s what I made them for…right?

Edited to say: I'm linking up with Today's Creative Blog, Get your Craft on Party.
My silly computer won't let me cut/paste the button. I'll have to figure that one out.