Happy Friday and I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays.

It’s been really nice to be home this last week. The house has been very busy with wrapping presents, cleaning up, and just running around doing chores. Somewhere in the middle of all this, I found time to create Christmas presents for my sister and my mom. With a little help from my cousin and my dad, we were able to make these great coasters that include pictures of the family.

This year, I also made little ornaments for everyone. I stitched in a tree, paw print, or menorah, depending on who the ornament was for, and wrote the corresponding name underneath it. Some of the ornaments were blue, some red, one camo print, and the dog ornaments were red with little paw prints over them. Those were my favorite.

We had a wonderful Christmas, opening gifts and spending the majority of the day together. We took a break in the early afternoon to start cooking, so some of us played a quick game of Mario Party. It was really nice to spend the day together.

I’m thrilled that the coasters I made were a big hit. My mom loves her photo albums but it’s hard to display all of the photos around the house. It was nice to be able to create something that can be used (everything in this house basically goes on a coaster) while still displaying some of the photos of that she really likes.

I followed the directions from here with a few modifications. Instead of using craft paper, I had photos printed as 4×6 and then cut them to the desired size. I used 4.5×4.5 white porcelain tiles as the base of my coaster. From here, half of the photo was cut to the size I wanted and glued on using Mod Podge. Since the tiles are porcelain it’s very hard to cut them, so I cut the rest of the photo using an x-acto knife on the actual tile. This allowed me to see the border I wanted around the photo much more clearer.

In order to make the tiles waterproof, they were coated in Envirotex Lite (purchased on Amazon) which is similar to polyurethane. Since the tiles are porcelain, only the top is finished, meaning the back is still very coarse and not great for stickiness. The felt I wanted to use as the coaster portion had one sticky side. In order to use this better, we first coated the back of the tiles with the Envirotex. (Good idea, Dad!). After drying, we coated the top, waited a few days, pasted on the felt, and wrapped the tiles up for gifts! We wrapped the tiles in parchment paper since the tiles were still curing and a little sticky, but parchment paper is non-stick.

I’m really happy with how these turned out for Christmas. They definitely took a while to do but I would highly recommend them as a personalized gift. My mom and my sister really loved the coasters they received.I hope everyone enjoys the New Year!

To be continued…

Gabriela