Save Your Wooden Furniture From Damage With These Stunning DIY Coasters

Although placing a drink on a wooden table can feel like second nature, many of us are guilty of allowing those pesky circular marks on our furniture to accumulate. However, there is an easy way to prevent this. Rather than placing your cup down with no protection, you could instead create a stunning DIY coaster. In a recent TikTok, user @letsresinofficial showed how to make a homemade coaster that will help prevent any damage while still looking incredibly eye-catching. In addition, it's also a great way to incorporate resin art into your home — perfect if you're just starting. 

However, that stunning finish doesn't come without a certain amount of hard work and creative flair. To make these for yourself, you'll need a frilled coaster mold, which you can find from Let's Resin for $26.99. Alternatively, you could always opt for some round, octagonal, or circular molds for $22.99 — it will all depend on your personal style. For the rest, grab some colored inks in your colors of choice, which are available from Michael's for $19.99, white pigment, epoxy resin, crushed gold glass for crafts, a gold paint pen, and a temperature gauge.

The first step of creating your DIY coasters is to pour a small plastic cup full of both your epoxy resin mixtures and wait for the temperature to reach approximately 89.6°F before pouring it into your coaster so you can start designing. To re-create the design from TikTok, add a dash of your gold crushed glass to the center before adding some drops of color. Next, mix your white pigment and pipe it onto the top in a swirl pattern, gently tracing across the top in a star pattern using singular lines to blend it in. Now you can leave it to cure, which should take around eight hours.

for the final step, mix another small cup of epoxy, but this time, add in some blue ink. Combine the two before pouring it into your already cured mold, which you should again leave for around eight hours. Once it's solid and dry, you can remove it from the mold and go in with your gold paint pen, using it to coat the outside rims, making sure you don't make any unnecessary marks on there. once completely cured, you can use it on your wooden furniture to place your cups down without worrying about any rogue trickles of water escaping.

If you feel like experimenting with the design, you have plenty of options. First, you may want to try a different-shaped mold, such as a square with gemstone rock detailing from Resin Obsession for $4.99, or go with a turtle-shaped mold from Etsy for $10.25, which will give you a unique look. Likewise, you could play around with colors and designs when mixing your inks or just have it all in one color, such as blue or purple. You could add materials such as glitter, pressed flowers (which you can find on Amazon for $12.97), dry-pressed fruits, and beads.

For special occasions such as Christmas, some festive-themed crafting molds might be more your thing and can be purchased for $14.99 on Amazon. Whatever option you choose, you should end up with a stunning result. The coaster prevents any water or liquid from touching your wood furniture, which can easily get damaged due to absorption. Of course, you should still be careful not to spill or knock over any liquid, even while using your new DIY creation. Now, all that's left to do is put them on display and get using them!