Lace Painted Wood Slice Coasters

So the other day, I discovered something amazing. Appearing seemingly out of nowhere in my local Michael’s store I found an ENTIRE AISLE full of laser cut wood shapes and decorations. Gone was the sad little quarter aisle of boring traditional plaques and picked over letter shapes. This was like the mecca of lacey wood frames and fun unpainted shapes and signs and banners. Does your local Michael’s have that now? I think I stood there for about 20 minutes just taking it all in.  My very last year of architecture grad school, our school got its own laser cutter and we were the first group of students to learn how to use it. Sometimes I think now how much that probably has changed things for architecture students from then on. A little advance planning and you can build a super precise and beautiful model. Whereas we had no choice but to spend hours cutting everything by hand. The first thing I really made with it was my thesis model which of course was also the last thing because I was graduating. But it was so amazingly cool to watch the laser cut out all the shapes.  And that model was so perfect and easy to build that ever since then I have dreamed of all the possibilities of what you could craft if you had access to your own.

But I don’t, so this will have to be good enough and this new aisle was definitely exciting for me. (Or maybe I’m just a craft nerd. You decide!) Anyway, I grabbed a bunch of things. Besides some really pretty 3 inch round lace shapes, I got some to shapes paint, some with other plans in mind and then in another area of the store (NOT nearby the magic laser cut wood shapes aisle which is weird) I found some nice birch bark wood slices. I think wood slices are going to be the “put a bird on it” of 2014. But maybe that’s just me. Anyway, I still like them. The end result was a set of pretty coasters that I think would make a fabulous gift for a housewarming or birthday!

Lace Painted Wood Slice Coasters

2 (or more) wood slices roughly 4 inches in diameter

3 inch lace laser cut wood shape

craft paint

1. I had plans to actually attach the lace shapes to the wood slices but when I did I felt like it obscured the wood grain too much. So instead I changed my plans and carefully, with a sharp mechanical pencil, I traced the shape on the top of the wood slice.  You could certainly use something else other than a laser cut wood shape for the stencil but this worked great and now I still have the lace shape to use for some other project!

2. Then using a small brush and lots of patience, I filled in my lace shape with white craft paint. When I was done, any pencil marks that were not painted over erased pretty well with a big eraser.

3. I finished it off by covering JUST the areas I painted with a coat of polyeurethane to protect the paint job. Will they hold up to super wet dripping glasses? Maybe not, but they’d be just right for a wine glass or something insulated and they will sure look cute sitting out on an end table! (If you do want to really protect them from wet cups, coat the entire top surface with a coat of an indoor/outdoor waterproof protectant.)

If you like this,  you may also like some of my other posts…

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Cassie May

Craft and Knitwear Designer at Little Red Window Design

Welcome to Little Red Window! I’m Cassie, a professional craft and knitwear designer working in the field for more than 10 years. I have a degree in Art History from Northwestern University and a Master's Degree in Architecture and Design from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I've designed more than 300 separate knitting patterns, hundreds of craft projects, and I love to bring joy to your crafts and knitting with well-designed, easy to understand tutorials and patterns.

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