... and some Paint Swatch Coasters

A nice quick and simple one for today... Well, we've already done the Button Coaster so we needed to do the Paint one too!!!

Materials:

• Paint Swatches in colours of your choice                                                                    (I went for Auburn Falls and Blue Diamond) in this case
• Craft knife and cutting mat
• Ruler
• Sticky tape
• Glue Stick
• Laminator and pouches (optional - I used the one at my work!)

First, work out how big you want your coaster to be. I went for approx 9 X 9 cm. Therefore each paint swatch strip would have to be 9 cm in length (3 of the colour blocks) and I knew I would need 1.5 swatches for the width.

Cut the paint swatches into strips using the craft knife and ruler. I went for a random weave with varying sizes so didn't measure the width of these strips, but if you wanted a more uniform weave, you could make them all the same width.

Line up all of the strips that will be going in one direction (blue below) and start to weave the other colour into it. I found it easier here to hold the pieces in place with some paper and sticky tape at first - once you have a few of the other colour in, it becomes sturdier!

Keep going until you achieve a square the size of your choice. Once completed, glue the ends of the strips down with a glue stick. Don't worry if the edges are ragged at this stage; once its dry you can take the ruler and craft knife and straighten the edges out. Make as many as you want!

Finally, to make them more effective as coasters i.e. waterproof  I laminated them (at work!) and then trimmed them back to size.

And use them as needed! These ones were made specifically for the colours of my my craft room but the beauty is you could match any room you wanted to!!

(I'm still working on my photography and staging of photos. I should have definitely put tea or coffee in the mug!!!)