Nerdy Craft Time! Coasters!

This summer I went to Home Depot to help my mom pick out some tile for her new bathroom and ended up leaving with a bag full of single white tiles. I promptly put them in my closet and forgot about them. Until now that is!

So the promise for this one is that you draw on a mug with a sharpie, pop it in the oven, and then it should be permanently stuck on there. Well I have an abundance of tiles, not plain white mugs, so coasters it is!

Because I've been a bit hooked on Percy Jackson and The Olympians lately, we are going with a God/Goddess theme. I love the books, Percy Jackson is adorable, and I love all the mythology fun. If you haven't picked up this series yet I highly recommend that you do. If you have read them and you're dying for more Percy Jackson, Rick Riordan has another Olympian themed series out, Heroes of Olympus. It introduces new demigods while keeping Percy Jackson around as well, and fleshes out the new great prophesy. I haven't read them yet because I need something to put on my Christmas list. But you can bet your boots that I'm going to read the crap out of those ones next! The last book won't come out until October next year but at least there are 4 to tide me over. I totally get that they are geared towards middle school children and I'm 28, but I still love them. They are super easy to read with fun stories. Rick Riordan did an awesome job with Percy Jackson. (minus a couple inconsistencies that I swore not to mention farther then this. They don't stop me from reading the books and I'm done.)

(Top left to right) Zeus, Poseidon, Hades
(Bottom left to right) Apollo, Artemis, Hermes 

I decided to create coasters for my favorite gods, minus Zeus because he seems like a jerk and I didn't really want him in my coaster collection, but I felt I needed to include him because I included Poseidon and Hades. We have Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hermes, Apollo, and Artemis.

I used regular and metallic sharpie markers (permanent markers) and .39 cent ceramic tiles from Home Depot. Mine have a glazed surface which worked out really nicely because I could wash off any mistakes I made. I found that if you made a small mistake you could wipe it off with a wet paper towel if you did it right away. After it dried it was stuck. You could scratch it off with a finger nail, but even that didn't work too well. I also found that certain colors never "dried" and I could always wipe the marker off. So if you allow yours to dry overnight before popping them into the oven make sure not to stack them on top of each other.
I also sprayed mine with a clear coat after firing them and letting them sit overnight. Some of my metallic marker was raised up and didn't have a smooth texture so I felt it would be better to clear coat them. I could totally see that snagging on my cups or whatever else and chipping away. I wouldn't recommend clear coating them without cooking them in the oven because it might over saturate your maker and cause it to run.

Some colors changed after being in the oven, Yellow turned brown and over all the colors weren't as bright coming out as they were going in. It isn't a huge deal but fair warning.
Also, sharpies don't make the smoothest looking solid color surfaces. You'll pretty much always get lines. Go with it and don't get discouraged.
You could use craft paint and clear coat the tiles instead of putting them in the oven if you are crazy about making it look solid colored instead of textured. Just don't mix markers and paint.

As always, I'll remind you that these are your nerdy craft time coasters. Mine aren't perfect and I don't care because I like them. Make what you like and love it.

Other then that, I don't really have a lot to say about this one. It's pretty straight forward and easy peasy.  I put individual pictures at the end.

On to the directions!!

 

What You'll Need

Plain white ceramic tiles (with a shiney glaze on top, don't use the rough unfinished ones)

Permanent markers (I used Sharpie brand)

Spray paint clear coat (I like Rustoleum, they never let me down)

An Oven (like the oven in your house, you need one)
Newspaper or cardboard

 

 

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees
2. Make sure your tiles and clean and dry. Draw your design on each tile and set aside to dry. Do not stack them on top of each other. Allow to dry for at least 10 minutes.
3. Once your oven is at 350 degrees, place your tiles on a cookie sheet (either an old one or one coated in foil, they shouldn't ruin your baking sheets, this is just a precaution) and place in the oven for 30 minutes. Set a timer!
4. After 30 minutes, turn your oven off, leave it closed with the tiles still inside, and allow the tiles to cool.
   This will keep them from cooling too quickly and they have less of a chance of cracking.
5. Once your tiles are cool to the touch remove them from your oven.
6. Allow to set overnight.
7. In an outdoor or well ventilated area (I used our garage since it's like 20 degrees here right now) lay out your cardboard or newspaper, place your tiles on top, and spray them with a thin coat of clear spray paint. Allow that to dry completely and if you'd like to add another coat you can do so.
8. Allow it to dry overnight. If it is cold where you live now, like it is here, you can bring them inside to dry. Just put them in a large open area. Don't let them sit in the cold overnight, your tiles or the clear coat could crack and that would just suck after all that work.
9. Done! Admire your beautiful creations!

 

It sounds like it has a ton of steps but trust me, it is super easy. If you aren't comfortable drawing free hand on your tiles, use a stencil. You can make one by printing a picture off your computer and using an x-acto knife or scissors to cut it out. Bam! Stencil.

 

I hope you're inspired to make your own nerdy coasters! Just remember that these aren't going to soak up any condensation from your glasses, like Thirsty Stone coasters, so be aware of that.

 

As always,

Enjoy! 

Believe it or not, Zeus' lightening bolt was yellow before I started. I'm not sure what happened in the bottom left hand side of the lightening bold, it looks like the yellow bled into the blue, this was the only coaster that did this. My only thought is that I didn't line the yellow completely and it mixed into the blue some how.  It is the only coaster with a solid color background, so maybe that's what happens when you color that much? But the green didn't bleed into the blue in Poseidon's coaster and the black didn't bleed into the purple on Hades' coaster so I really have no idea.

If I could do this over again, I would have painted Poseidon's coaster. I love the metallic marker but his trident could have been so much better.

I can't draw helmets. But I did find this nifty picture of Hades holding a staff that looked a bit like this. Because Zeus and Poseidon had backgrounds I thought it needed something else. So we have the purple river styx because it can't be blue and a cypress tree because I read somewhere they were sacred to Hades. I should have left the tree out but whatever. This is my favorite coaster. I might actually make 3 more like it and use them in my house.  

Hermes is one of my favorite gods with my least favorite symbol of power. I'm pretty sure his snakes are both green but it was hard to see them intertwining if they were the same color.  They have the giant loop and then smaller ones in all of the pictures but on mine it looks unintentional.

The goldish bronzey lines in between the orange were yellow when I started. I still like how it turned out. I think Apollo's sun is pretty cool.

It is much harder to make a decent looking crescent moon then you think, especially when you're going to stick an arrow through it. But I'm glad I ended up finding a silver marker and Artemis' moon is just fine. I actually went over this twice, I colored it once, cooked it in the oven, and then went over the sparse areas again. This worked well for the metallic markers but started to remove paint when I tried this with the regular sharpie markers.