Coaster – A Smith of All Trades

I cleaned the heck out of my craft room last night, thank goodness. It looks so much better now, but I did manage to distract myself with a quick project. Then I got back to cleaning! Phew.

As I was putting stuff away, I found a pretty sheet of navy felt that I wanted to use to make a felt flower. So I took a break from tidying, grabbed my glue gun, some scissors and a coaster, and set out to craft.

I started my quick flower project with a small, round, cardboard coaster and many, many, many flower petals cut out of the felt.

To make the flower, I put hot glue onto the edge of the coaster, then placed a felt petal on top of the glue. I let it sit for a second or two so the glue would cool a bit, then I pinched the petal to create a crease in each one.

I did this until I got around the entire edge of the coaster.

With the edge covered in petals, I started filling in the middle with petals. I did another full circle of petals, then four to fill in the center.

I put a glob of glue in the middle of the flower, then placed an awesome, old button in the middle. Not sure exactly what I’m going to do with it, but I think this flower would be super pretty on a wreath.

My father-in-law passed away a year and a half ago and my hubby’s mom has generously given us many of Grant’s personal belongings to incorporate in our home to help us remember him every day. Among the things she gave us were a few of Grant’s collections, including a coin collection, a collection of chess pieces and a bunch of old coasters he collected when he was overseas in Germany. I’ve kept these things in my craft room, waiting for inspiration on how to display them in our home.

I had an old record frame sitting in my craft room, so I decided to frame some of Grant’s coasters for us to display. It was a simple project, but I think the finished product looks great.

Here’s what I used: Coaster, brown wrapping paper, hot glue, record frame.

I cut the brown paper down and laid the back of the record frame on top.

I folded the edges over the back of the frame to get a clean look from the front — the record frame doesn’t leave much room for error. Almost everything in the frame is shown, including the edges.

I made sure the paper fit into the frame nicely before I started adding the coasters.

I originally intended on gluing the coasters to the paper and spacing them out by eye, but they fit so tightly in the frame that I decided to do it the opposite way. So, I laid them out in the frame the way I wanted them to appear in the frame.