Tumbled Tiles/Coasters--help!
 

What are tumbled tiles/coasters and how do you do this? Help!!!!

Tumbled Tile Coasters
 

First of all, tumbled tiles are tiles that can be found at your local home goods store like Lowes, Home Depot, etc. in the tile department. There are some grades of them that are better than others so be sure to chose wisely. When I'm buying them, I make myself real comfortable on the floor and go through everyone in a box before I buy them.

Then you get them home and you wipe the dust off with a damp cloth and you stamp an image with StazOn directly to the tile and color it in with various inks, chauks, etc. Depending on what you use on them determines if they need to be sealed or not. You then put cork or felt or something on the bottom to make it a coaster.

Do a search on here and you will find several! Good luck and let me know if you need anything else.

Re: Tumbled Tile Coasters
 

OMG ~ I do the exact same thing. I have to find the perfect tiles and make myself a box. I've been known to sit for an hour. I have found that HD definitely has better tiles than Lowes. Lowes' seem to be more brown than HD's.

I have a few of these tiles in my gallery if you want to click on the link in my signature. You'll see plenty of samples.

Good luck!!

After the tiles are stamped with Stazon, are they colored in with markers, pastels...? And then what are they sealed with? Does the image fade if they are used frequently?

I would like to make these for Christmas presents.

Thanks, Angela

I have some in my gallery with instructions. Click the link under my name.

Mine aren't rubbing off, as I sealed them with 3 or 4 coats of acrylic spray.

Hope that helps.
NY Nan

tumbled tiles
 

i'm confused. i thought you shouldn't seal them so they could absorb the liquid from your drink. please set me straight.

Lisa- I have done a bunch now on the finished tiles and have had to seal them, we made 150 magnets on friday with the 2 x2 brown tiles and did not seal them. They looked great. But they were not going to get wet all the time. I usually have a few "prototypes" that I make when working with any of the tiles because they seem to behave differently for me. I will make one and scuff it, wet it, etc to make sure that it will be okay for whomever I will send it to.
Have lots of fun making them.

Re: tumbled tiles
 

Yes, you can seal them. You just have to watch which kind of sealer you buy. I don't worry about sweaty glasses, so I use regular Patricia Nimock sealer. If you want them to absorb the water you use a fixative that will hold the color but still allow the coaster to soak up the water. Some do tiles as decorations rather than as coasters. That's when you definitely seal them. Whenever you use pastels, watercolor pencils, colored pencils, you have to seal them or worry that they may run regardless of where you put them. Even a decoration can get water spilled on it. Believe me, I've seen it happen.

Good luck! I'm going to HD today at lunch for a trivett size. If only I could decide on a design first.

what kind of fixative would you use to seal color but absorb water. I have the Patricia Nimocks sealer but I will giving mine as gifts to be used as coasters.

What about baking them?

Do they need to be sealed if you use sharpies?

Thanks,
Debbie

Thanks bunches. Will give this a try!