Post-it-note Pad for my elder daughter

A few months ago I saw a video on YouTube, that showed a woman altering coasters to make the covers for a post-it-note pad.  I thought to myself “I could do that”, then promptly forgot all about it.

In January I saw some coasters in our local bargain hardware shop, and I remembered the video.  I bought a pack of coasters, and this is the result!

I was supposed to be making something with teal as the main colour, as that is my daughter's current favourite.  However, I couldn't find any paper in my stash that was remotely like teal, so I gave up and used a pinky-red, because it went with the post-it-note papers that I had.  I hope my daughter wont mind!


To prepare the coasters, I first peeled off the shiny printed surface, then sanded the remaining paper lightly, to give the glue a key.  I also sanded all of the shiny surface off the edges.  The coasters are about 9.5 cms square, so I was able to use just one sheet of 8 ins square oriental-patterned paper, cut into quarters, to cover the four surfaces.  I did one surface at a time, using watered-down PVA to glue the paper on.  I bent the excess paper over the edges, then sanded the excess paper off.  When the glue was dry, I dabbed all the edges with a gold Adirondack paint dabber, leaving the surface rough.  When this had dried, I stamped the oriental text background stamp onto the front and back outer surfaces, using black Archival ink.  I lightly wiped the ink off the paint, so that it left a sort-of ghost image on the gold.


Now it was time to do the binding!  This time I was lucky - I only needed six holes, so it wasn't quite as difficult to get the loops looking moderately round.


For the flower on the top, I diecut some shapes out of patterned paper backed with red card, using my Tattered Florals die, and then did some stamping with white Gesso.  The result was rather flat, so I painted the edges of the petals with my gold paint dabber.  It still looked boring, so I painted the whole of the inside of each flower shape with mica.  Much better!  To make the stamens, I cut a rough circle of black paper, fringed the edge of it, then twisted each bit of the fringe slightly.  I dabbed the edges with gold paint, to tie the black in with the rest of the colour scheme. To shape the flower, I used a sponge mat and a large ball-tool that I bought from the Glitter Girls.  I glued all the layers together with Glossy Accents, then added half of an old press-stud in the centre.  I had intended to sit the flower on a leaf, but I didn't want to add green to my colour-scheme, and I thought a black or gold leaf would look silly.  So I ended up using a flourish - again!  I diecut it out of waste mount-board using my Elegant Flourishes die, and had to trim it, as it was too large.  I painted it gold and stuck it on with Glossy Accents.  Finally, I stuck the flower on with Pinflair Glue Gel.