A Rescued Halloween Fail

For the past couple of evenings I have happily been working on some new holiday burlap coasters.  Especially since I discovered that they make burlap in various colors like red, black, green, and orange.  To tell you the truth, I didn’t really care for the orange or the green but the black and red got the wheels turning in my head.  I was all set to make several sets of Halloween coasters using a witch stencil that I burned with my stencil burning tool.  I love the silhouette of this witch and added a number “31” to it because really, when in doubt, you can always add a number.  At least in my creative world.  Numbers rock.

The coasters were coming along quite nicely and I had quite the production line going and I was pumping out witches.  White paint on black burlap.  What a great Halloween combo.  Until the paint started to dry and started taking on a grayish cast.  Well, while I was working on the Halloween witches, I also created a reindeer on red burlap that was going to be for Christmas.  The white paint on the red burlap looked awesome until it too started to dry and my cute little reindeers started turning pink!  Augh!!  So, I sat and thought about it and I did a little water in the sink test with both the black and red burlap.  Both started to run.  Double Augh!

I was making the coasters to sell and I was going to have a lot of angry customers I envisioned if they used my coasters on their white linen table cloths thinking they were protecting it by using one of my festive coasters. But I also envisioned that somehow the coaster could get wet, either from a spill or maybe if the glass started to sweat. I could see my cute red reindeer coasters bleeding red dye onto their heirloom and crisply pressed white table cloths and in my mind’s eye saw the look of horror come over their face.

My black and red burlap coasters were going to be a liability and so production was abruptly halted

Now, what was I going to do with all of the coaster I had already made?

Burlap Banners! A little bit of jute and I was back in business.