Our Creative Friday class were busy on Friday, July 26, 2013 creating beautiful texture tiles. We were fortunate to get our hands on a box of 4” x 4” unglazed tiles. We had in mind to turn these into coasters by texturing the top surface and painting some cool designs on top of the texture.
The tiles were clean so we sealed the top, bottom and sides with a Legacy sealer. This is a bottle that I have had in the Studio for awhile, still works but does not seem to be available in this form. If anyone has any product suggestions for sealers please let us know.
We did find that when we applied the textured medium directly to the untreated surface of the unglazed tile that the textured medium did not bond to the surface and flaked off – not a happy discovery.
We used 2 products to texture our tile surfaces. We had one part bottle of DecoArt Texture Crackle (now discontinued), some Golden crackle medium, a jar of Martha Living Crackle (Sandbar 123 819) and a jar of Martha Living Crackle (Redwood 124 178).
The DecoArt crackle tends to dry out and need rejuvenation with water. It apples well with a palette knife and develops a nice crackled surface. Surfaces were left to dry overnight.
Both Martha Living crackle products applied smoothly to the surfaces with a palette knife and developed interesting crackle surfaces when dry. (Tiles were left to dry several days).
The Golden Crackle product was left to dry overnight and developed very nice a crackle surface. This product is white but can be tinted.
We applied a coat of sealer to the dry textured tile surface and once dry applied our designs to the surface and painted these tiles. These tiles will sprayed with an application of clear coat or several coats of a water based varnish.
There are many ways to treat the back of the tile using felt pads, clear rubber buttons or cork. Cork applied to the back of the tiles using a spray adhesive or Golden Gel Medium and the cork should be sealed when finally in place.
Here are the photos of some our almost finished interesting textured tiles.
Studio Thirty Eight 