Chances are that if you’re on Pinterest than you’ve seen the picture of the basic white tile turned into a gorgeous coaster using rubbing alcohol and Sharpie Markers.
I’ve been drooling over it for awhile but have always forgotten to buy a few plain glazed tiles whenever I was at a home improvement store. Then the other day while I was picking up the garage I found a huge box of plain tile left over from the last homeowner hidden away under a shelf.
It was time to give the sharpie and rubbing alcohol on tile a try.
Step 1 on the tutorial I was reading from Pinterest said to color the tile with bright colors. Done.
Then you’re supposed to drop small amounts of rubbing alcohol on top of the tile slowly. I used a straw, holding the top closed to control how much liquid dropped onto the tile.
At first it looked really pretty and I thought it might just work!
But there were areas that you could still see the marker strokes and that really bugged me. I tried to just move it to the side and not touch it so the rubbing alcohol would dry.
I reread the instructions again and realized that you weren’t supposed to just slowly drop the rubbing alcohol on the tile, you are supposed to do a few drops and then wait a few minutes and do some more. So I decided to try again.
On the next tile I did fewer colors and really took my time to dropping rubbing alcohol and then let it dry for a few minutes. 30 minutes(!!!) into the project it looked promising but still wasn’t like the pictures on Pinterest.
But here’s the thing – the rubbing alcohol keeps working even when you get it looking how you kinda want it to look.
Can you see that tile in the upper left hand corner? That’s the first tile. The rubbing alcohol is making the tile turn white again!
Slowly but surely that nice looking tile started to do this while I was waiting on the rubbing alcohol to dry.
Finally this is the end result. The first tile took ten minutes max to complete but the extra rubbing alcohol from not going as slowly really washed out all of the colors. The second one took 30 minutes to complete and does not look like a project that I just spent 30 minutes on.
Have you tried it? I’m still going to use the rest of the tiles that I found in our garage but I’ll have to come up with some other ideas.
For me this is a huge Pinterest fail.
I read that the alcohol has to be 99% strength or it won’t work.
Haven’t tried this yet but plan on it. Looks too fussy for preschoolers but I’ll try it myself first.
Cheers!
Thanks! I’ll verify I bought the correct one but I looked online while I was still at the store. Let me know if it works for you!
Thanks so much for sharing this Pinterest fail. I think it’s great when bloggers share what doesn’t work…we are all human and not everything turns out as we expect. Happy Tuesday!
I’m sorry it didn’t work for you! I just finished working on this same project with my family and it turned out great! My policy is to never trust Pintrest. It always misleads me… But this project worked for me because i didn’t use Pintrest – I used the sharpie website: http://blog.sharpie.com/2013/04/coasting-into-spring/ What I found was best was to use I droppers but then blow on them. They were really cool. Hopefully they’ll turn out well for you too!
Try putting the alcohol in a spray pump bottle.
See how that works.
Hi. I tried this tonight. It worked really well with the chisel sharpies (big tip gives more bold color) and 91% alcohol. Worked like a charm
That’s great! I’m glad it worked for you.