Thrifty Thursday - Wallpaper Sample Coasters (a bit of a fail...)

Thank you first for all your kind comments about the bedroom revamp!  It certainly has been worth all the hard work, and this morning I actually got a cup of tea in bed!  

Now you might suspect from this that Mr U-t-B had read my blog and decided to surprise me, but no, it was only as he was drinking his own cup of tea that he switched his laptop on, told me that he'd started reading my post yesterday evening but had fallen asleep half-way through, (Oh they know how to wound, your nearest and dearest, don't they?) and hooted with laughter when he saw what I had written! It was a good thing I was still in bed as otherwise I might have fallen over!

One of the things about having decorated is that things that I previously didn't notice (because there was much more clutter, and things were an unholy mess  not quite co-ordinated) now grate on me.  Or on my eye, to be more precise.  So something as small as a coaster, in a room with fewer knick knacks, can look out of place.  I tried to tackle this by exchanging a few of these rather scratched and tired coasters...

...for these (which were a Christmas present last year)...

But the rosy ones look nice in the sitting room (and the gift-giver gets to see that I love them that way), so I wanted to come up with an alternative.

When I had been trying to decide on wallpaper, I got a good number of samples (as I'm a bit of a ditherer!)

The other day, Mr U-t-B had gathered them all up and put them by the back door to go in the bin, so I had to quickly spirit them away.  I'd had to pay for some of them, after all, so I wasn't going to just chuck them away!

So I thought I'd use some of them to give the old coasters an uplift.  Some PVA glue and a sharp craft knife, plus some matt varnish would be all I would need - stuff that I already had.

Soon I had created these...

Zoffany  'Meadow' wallpaper

...these...

Sanderson's 'Marney' wallpaper

...these...

Harlequin 'Iola Rose' wallpaper

...and this, which made use of a pretty birthday card I couldn't bear to part with.

So the Zoffany ones are now in our room, looking pleasingly 

co-ordinated and useful.  May I emphasise 'LOOKING useful'. But - oops - this is the problem we have...

Not so useful after all!  

A craft project to file under 'Needs Improvement'...
Probably NOT one to try at home.

If you know the solution to tacky varnish, do let me know!