Sublimation Coasters

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    Last Thursday, my friend and I made some sublimation coasters. We first bought some sublimation coasters. We got ours from Michaels and these ones were a bit more pricier than some of the other choices, but we decided to go with these because they had a bit of a marble look to them on the sides and we liked that these coasters were smooth and shiny compared to matte. Next we picked out 4 designs that were similar because we wanted to have a set of 4 coasters that were cohesive and go well together (same kind of art style). This part took us a while to get because it was surprisingly hard to find 4 different images in the same style that we liked. We finally decided on our 4 designs after maybe a couple weeks of slowly looking. We decided to go with a location theme. So the first coaster was of Venice Italy, the second coaster was of Zurich Switzerland, the third coaster was of Ibiza Spain and the fourth coaster was of Tokyo Japan. We first made the Ibiza coaster and that one turned out perfect. We printed out the designs on sublimation paper using the sublimation ink. Then we used heat transfer tape to secure the coaster to the design. Next we heated up the heat press to 345 degrees fahrenheit and set the timer for 60 seconds. These are the time and temp that were recommended for these specific coasters, but when we tried heat pressing them we found that the time was not accurate for us. We wound up doing 356 degrees fahrenheit for 60 seconds but we pressed it 3 times at the 60 seconds instead of 1 time. After pressing the first coaster we moved onto the second coaster which was Tokyo Japan. This one we were having a few problems with, the image didnt completely finish transferring all the way so we had to repress it for a fourth time. But when we repressed it the image must have shifted slightly because we wound up with a blurry design. We decided to try again but this time the design was backward because we forgot to flip the design before printing. After we messed up on the same design twice, we decided maybe this design wasn't ment to work out and after looking at all the coasters together we wanted to go with a lighter more pastel design so it matched the rest of the coasters better. So we will probably redo that one once we have another design. We then continued to press the Venice Italy and Zurich Switzerland coaster. Overall these coasters turned out pretty well other than our mistakes on the Tokyo Japan coaster. We will definitely be doing more coasters and fixing the last coaster from this set. Below I have attached pictures of how our coasters turned out. 

Materials Needed:

  • Sublimation printer (or acess to one)
  • Sublimation paper
  • Sublimation Coasters
  • Sublimation Ink
  • Heat Resistant Tape
  • Heat Press (or access to one)

2nd Try - Tokyp Japan is backward
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Tokyo 1st Try - Coaster is blurry and design shifted









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