Wedding Gift: Quilled Coasters

Having become slightly paranoid about privacy lately, and wanting to protect the privacy of others, I will be referring to my sister and brother-in-law by their initials; G and A.

  The wedding is over! I'm still recovering, but everything went smoothly. Upon seeing the quilled coasters that I finally finished last year, G and A requested a monogrammed set of coasters. They chose the letter style and coaster shape; the rest was up to me! They decided on square coasters, which I ordered from the Quilling Superstore. I have to say, I was not overly impressed with the quality, compared with my original coasters. Although they were clearer, you could see little bubbles and swirls in the plastic. Once the quilling is in, you don't really notice. The other snag I ran into was that the sticky background was just a plain sort of cardboard. The original coasters had a white background, enabling me to rearrange pieces a bit. This was one chance only since I had to glue everything to the background paper I chose. Deciding on a background color was fairly simple - I originally wanted to use cream, but Mom didn't have the perfect cream paper in her stash. She did have a perfect brown, though.

 To vary the designs, two were made square, and four go diagonally. I also wanted to keep them somewhat monochromatic, in keeping with the happy couple's decorating style. This worked for the first two designs, but the third needed something to make it pop. This was where my little Altoids box of extra pieces came in handy. I've saved every shape that didn't get used in a project; playing with the different shapes makes it much easier to visualize and plan a design. I had some blue S Scrolls, and kept coming back to the color. It ended up being perfect!

Has anyone ever made coasters before? Where did you get the coasters from? My original coasters came from Michaels, but they only come in a six-sided shape, and are almost always nearly out of them. If I can find a coaster/paperweight at a decent price, that looks nice, I plan to design a few for my Etsy shop.