Altering these drink coasters is fun! They give them to you at restaurants no matter what you order so they are easy to obtain.  Fortunately for me, my friend gave me some to play with.

I love taking something that has no spiritual meaning to it whatsoever and turning it into something that points to Christ.  It reminds me of the verse about salvation–“…old things have passed away, behold all things are made new! “(2 Cor. 5:17)

I like making things “new”.

Now to the coaster…

My neighbor has a scarlet macaw parrot, Ruby.  You may have seen her when I posted about her visit over to our house recently.  I was given a bag of her beautiful  feathers that day, and when I saw this round coaster, I knew I wanted to try to make an ornament using the feathers.

My in-laws went to NYC recently and brought me back a member’s packet from The Met.  What a surprise it was when I flipped through the catalog and found that Mantegna was the featured artist.  I have a whole book on Mantegna, so I knew that some of his paintings are very bright with lots of reds, yellows, and blues.  Even better, they had a nice size print of his “Adoration of the Sheperds” with just the right colors in it. Perfect!

I sanded the image a little and rubbed it with some Tea Stain distressing ink to take some of the sheen off of it.

I carefully glued the feathers around the back and covered them with another circle of decorative paper to hide the ends.  Then I punched two holes in the top for a hanger.

I used some pretty blue fiber to adhere around the edge of the circle to give it a more finished look.

I twisted some red, blue, and yellow fibers together and tied them on for a colorful hanger.

I’m counting on my neighbor to be too busy to look at my blog this month, but if you do happen to stop by, Andrea, here’s your Christmas present! Merry Christmas!