Natural stone is one of the most popular drink coaster materials right now. Stone provides a certain weight, a force, inherited from its mountainous mother, which makes it seem more real and permanent than other flimsier coaster products. Many natural stones also have that wonderfully absorbent quality, which allows them to soak up the moisture from your glass, leaving your tabletops nice and dry.

However
stone coasters [http://coasters.pebblez.com/stone-coasters.html] are more than just solid unchanging accessories, they are actually tiny canvases, just waiting for you to put your own personalized touch on them. In this way you can meld the artistic spirit within your soul with the creative power of the earth itself.

While there are stone coasters that come pre-printed with a variety of fanciful designs, in order to create your own personal mark on the piece, it will be best to start with unprinted natural stone coasters. Even though natural stone does often have a variety of multicolored features in its surface, it is still a lot easier to add to then already printed pieces. In fact, many people like to incorporate the natural features of the stone, both textural and visual, in whatever design they make.

The easiest way to put your stamp on a stone coaster is to simply use a stamp. Stamps can be purchased with any number of messages, or visuals and ink can come in a variety of colors. While you will be limited to monotone hues, stamps do represent the easiest, and most cost effective method of adding a little of your own personality to these natural accessories.

Cloth is another way to change up the look of your coasters. Find absorbent pieces of cotton, felt, or other cloth materials, and spread them over the surface of the stone. The cloth can be secured using an adhesive, or you can just pin it at the bottom, allowing you to remove it and change the look of the coaster whenever you like. If you want to get elaborate, the cloth can be embroidered, or decorated by cutting out various designs in felt or cloth, and gluing them to the initial piece. The great thing about this method is that moisture from a wet glass will soak down through the cloth, and absorb straight into the natural stone. This will make the coaster even more absorbent, as well as helping to protect the stone from the occasional fruit juice spill.

Another creative way to decorate stone coasters is to glue tiny decorative tiles to the surface of the piece. These tiles can be anything, from broken dishes, to mosaic tiles. Many people even use pieces from board games, such as scrabble tiles arranged to spell out different messages.

If the stone being used is absorbent, place the tiles so that there are clearly visible gaps in between them. This will allow the moisture from your glass to seep down past the non-absorbent tiles, in order to reach the stone itself. This keeps your coasters absorbent, and functional.

If you want to get really creative, you can use the coasters as real canvases, applying latex paint to the surface of the stone to get a totally original work of art. While this does destroy the absorbency of the stone, it is still a really popular activity. This is because it is actually quite fun to paint on natural stone. This material has such a unique personality, both due to the one of a kind color patterns found in most pieces, but also because of the rich textures, which rise and fall just slightly, giving you a whole new dimension to work on. One important thing to note is that if you want to preserve this artwork, you should use polyurethane or water based sealer on the coaster, to make the image permanent and resistant to moisture damage.

Natural stone coasters are wonderful and functional tabletop accessories, however if you get bored with them, that isn't necessarily the end. There are a wide variety of fun and engaging craft projects which can be used to add your own personal touches to the natural decorative beauty of these pieces. In this way you can personalize a piece of Mother Nature.