Mod Podge Coasters

After making my cork containers, I wanted to find a way to use the leftover cork. When I stumbled across this tutorial, I knew I'd found the perfect project! Thank you, world o' blogs, for daily inspiration.

All you need is:

• plain tiles from your local home improvement store
• scrapbooking or wrapping paper (you could even use pictures for a personal touch, newspaper clippings for a "memento" look, letters...just about anything that doesn't have smearable ink--the moisture from the mod podge could smear topical inks during brushing)
• mod podge
• cork (you could also use felt for the bottoms!)
• adhesive (I used a spray adhesive)
• polycrylic (optional--top coat for protection)

Start by tracing your tile onto the paper, then cut it out.

Once you've cut all of the paper pieces, brush mod podge directly onto the tile and lay the paper down on top.
Then coat the top with at least five more coats of mod podge, allowing 20 minutes for drying time between each coat. (The whiteness will become clear once it's dry.) At this point, I coated each coaster with two more coats of polycrylic, allowing it to dry overnight. This not only adds a protective top layer, but it also allows you to use the coasters for hot beverages within days rather than weeks.
Now for the cork. I also mentioned you could use felt for the bottom, but I think the cork adds a professional touch (and I also had it...hence the whole start of this project). I used a spray adhesive to attach the cut pieces of cork to the bottom, but you could also use something like rubber cement.

And done!
I found these cute mugs for my best friend's dorm, so of course I had to make her some coasters to go with them...
...she is a lover of all things monkey, so I found some cute monkey scrapbooking paper for her set.

Pretty cute, huh?

Even better...the only materials I bought for this project were the tiles (at 16 cents apiece) and the paper (anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar per piece).

Happy coastering!