MI Home Coaster

Made up a couple of sets of these Michigan Home coasters for some custom orders I received.They got a good amount of interest at a craft show I participated in! 

The "home" thing seems to be pretty popular these days and there are an endless number of variations that you can come up with to keep them fresh and cool looking. I like the way these came out a lot. To me the great lakes almost look like a coffee/water stain on the tile. 

To create these, I printed out the image on a laser printer and transferred them to the stone tile using Modge Podge. The coasters are then sealed with more Modge Podge and an acrylic sealer.

The Golf Club Patent Coasters

Despite popular belief, I did not invent golf clubs

These awesome coasters were created using images retrieved from the US Patent office website which the Google will conveniently search for you. I'm no lawyer, but since these are public domain images, they are free to use... probably. Here's an interesting take on the issue by a real intellectual property lawyer. I used Modge Podge to transfer the printed images onto tumbled stone tiles, a process I will outline in a later post.
I had to rework the images a bit to get them to fit on the square tiles.

I think they came out super classy and was proud to give them as a present to the best golfer I know... my dad!

Quick Tip: Dentless Beer Bottle Cap Removal

Bah, damaged, my project is ruined!

One thing we like to do here at the Coaster Kings Labs is make #beercrafts with beer bottle caps. Here is a quick tip about how to remove the beer bottle cap without putting a dent in it! I picked this little nugget of information up in the comments section of a blog somewhere a few months ago. Sadly, I can't remember where I found it.

Depending on the style of bottle opener, it can be pretty easy to dent up that bottle cap, leaving you with feelings of sadness and despair as you realize your carefully planned out #beercraft is already flawed.



Things You'll Need:

mmmm beer...

• A quarter. I've had success with other coinage as well. 
• A bottle opener. Church-key style openers work the best.
• A bottle with a bottle cap on it still... duh.
• Electrical Tape (Optional). If you're worried about scratching up the bottle cap with your quarter, throw some electrical tape on the quarter. 

Try It Out:

Step 1: Put the quarter on the bottle cap.
Step 2: Using the bottle opener, firmly pry off the cap.  You can still damage the sides pretty easily if you aren't paying attention to what you are doing.
Step 3: Drink the beer!
Step 4: #BeerCraft!

Doing this with a camera in one hand is
incredibly difficult.

In conclusion, I think I'm going to dedicate a quarter to this task and stick some electrical tape on it. Depending on the cap, some of them scratch up pretty easy as you can see below, this one got a little scratched up, but no dents! (Also, just throwing it in a container with a bunch of other caps can scratch it up as well.)

No dents!