Altered Artists meeting-playing with coasters

Myself and 3 other gals meet once a month to play. This time I brought my big box of coasters and I had pre-prepped some of them to do transfers onto (gesso-gel medium-page from phone book-gesso). We all did our transfers - soft gel medium matte, then an ink-jet copy face down on the gel medium, rub with bone folder, and pull off carefully- (sorry for the quality of the photos, I can't figure out how to get my digital to take good close up pics yet):






We then played with the images a bit, adding stamps to them:






I was able to scan mine:




And one that I didn't transfer onto first:



New Idea

Then Marg had another idea, from a workshop she had been to recently:

First we covered a coaster with scrapbook paper, making sure we had an interesting torn edge:


Then we got out the brown shoe polish, and a neutral polish - it was supposed to be saddle soap but we didn't have any - we dipped into the brown, then into the neutral, then rubbed it all over the coaster:



Then we melted some beeswax in a little cup with a heat gun and painted the beeswax onto the coaster. It was a bit bumpy and matte:





Then we heated the wax on the coaster until much of it melted and dripped off, leaving a nice smooth finish:





Then I buffed it and scanned it:



You can see a bit of picture from the coaster coming through, the next time I do this I will gesso it first. It has a very leather-like quality to it, and it feels awesome! I'll try using this idea for athe covers of a book.

Brenda's Idea

While Marg, Bev and I were doing the wax, Brenda had her own idea to make a kind of a screen or accordian book using the square coasters, some bamboo scewers and some beads for feet:




It's a great idea, I'll take another photo next month when it's all finished!
We have also decided to do a Dictionary Round Robin, so I'll add those pages next month, and we are going to do something very different at the next meeting - you'll have to wait to find out!