{Spotlight Project} Shirley's On The Tiles

I've had this idea in my head for the cup image in Brew-Tiful Day ever since I designed it. I wanted to make travertine tile coasters with it, with each cup having a different coloured highlight. I got there, but not without a few issues.

My first problem was getting hold of some travertine tiles. My local DIY superstore only had one suitable 4x4 inch tile sample, so I bought that. Fortunately, when I popped into a smaller branch they had several, and they were on sale, so I bought a job lot. By their nature, each tile is slightly different but I managed to group them into reasonable sets of four.

There was one odd, leftover tile, so that became my prototype. Because the surface of this tile was quite granular and uneven, I didn't get a solid image. Where it was quite noticeable I filled in the gaps with a black Sharpie.

I had hoped that the tiles would fit into the MISTI (minus the black foam layer) but they were still too high, so I arranged some acrylic blocks to fit around the tiles and support my old-fashioned stamp positioner. The set of tiles I've used here is the smoothest of the lot, but I needed to stamp the image three times on each tile to get a good impression. Then it was just a matter of adding colour with Sharpies.

I'm not a coffee drinker, but DH is, so I pinched one of his coffee capsules to use as a prop :)

We don't always eat the biscuits when we're in a cafe, so I bring them home.

I went over the colour twice on this one because the tile is a bit darker.

Hot pink. Why not?

Apparently you don't need to seal the tiles if you're using Staz-On and Sharpies, but you can't let the two inks touch when you're colouring, as they are both solvent-based.  That suited my style for these images perfectly.  DH was extremely impressed with them and thought I should sell them.

If you try out any of the techniques from our Spotlight posts, link up your project up at our Spotlight Project Showcase.