My kids love my Glowforge almost as much as I do and are always asking to laser cut stuff on it. In the last few weeks I have made two Fortnite weapons, a Mario piranha plant, and a monstera leaf necklace from laser cut and engraved wood on my Glowforge laser cutter. After cutting my daughter’s monstera leaf necklace, I realized that the monstera leaf would make a super cute coaster too. So I scaled up the design and cut out 4 leaves from a piece of basswood to make these DIY gradient monstera leaf coasters! While they looked super cute as plain wood, I couldn’t help but add some colorful paint to make them more my style.
See how cute they are with the gradient paint?! If you have your own Glowforge you can easily cut your own monstera leaf or other shaped coasters and paint them using the same technique to create a fun colorful coaster set to sell or give as gifts for every season. But if you don’t have a Glowforge (you should really consider getting one though if you love to craft, make, and sell your creations), you can grab a set of laser cut shapes in my shop here.
Once you have the shapes, you can follow along with my tutorial below to give them a gradient paint job.
Materials to make your own DIY gradient monstera leaf coasters:
- Laser cut wood monstera leaves
- Multi surface acrylic craft paint in 3-4 shades of one color
- Medium paint brush
- Sealant (like Mod Podge or shellac)
Instructions
Begin by peeling off the paper backing from your laser cut wood pieces. Then squirt dollops of paint in the shades of the color gradient you are making from dark to light onto the wood leaf.
As you can see above I also painted a few with an abstract brushstroke look, but then went back and painted a few of them gradient too. Hence why the coaster in the photo above already has paint on it. But I digress. Once you have your paint on the leaf, use the paint brush (starting at the top), to sweep the paint across the leaf in a horizontal band. Once the first color is brushed on, move on to the second color without cleaning your paint brush. Brush over the area where the two colors meet to blend the colors and create the gradient look. Repeat working your way down the leaf cutout blending the colors together as you go to create the gradient look.
As you can see you can get a very pretty gradient effect by doing this which I love on the monstera leaves! If you can’t be that controlled with your painting, try an abstract brushstroke look by simply adding strokes of color to the leaves in any which way. Just be sure to stick to one color palette or else the leaves could turn brown from the mixing of too many contrasting paint colors.
Once the paint is dry, give the coasters a coat of sealant. Let dry and then they are ready to use!
More Information
If coasters are your thing, you can also use this same technique to laser cut smaller leaves to use as earrings or a necklace or keychain! How cute would those be?! After reading this, if you are still on the fence about getting a Glowforge, I would say do it! I love mine and have created so many unique products with it. Not to mention I have made my money back on it by selling items I have cut with it as well as getting referral credits which you can do too! So it really does pay for itself! And if you use my referral link here, you can get a major discount on one of your own.
