How to use marble contact paper

Hello friends, I’m going to give you my tips and tricks for using marble contact paper.  I’m in love with this stuff and I’m sure your going to love it too.  I looked for this marble contact paper at Walmart and Target  neither had the look i was going for.  I found this gorgeous marble contact paper from Amazon.  I was giddy not only was it marble it had gold veins shot through it.  I grab a roll of this around 5$ and a roll of very heavy duty regular looking marble (below) around 9$. I also have a post doing this contact paper technique on a table. HERE 

What started me thinking about using this kind of product is, that its inexpensive and very trendy right now.  Crate and Barrel, and west elm are using it in their accessories this season mixing it with wood inlays and I’m dying at how cute it is!! Of course I’m always trying to think how I can get this high end look without breaking the bank!!  first I’m going to show you how to make these darling coasters. ok not these cause these are from designer Samantha Wills and they are 158$  I’ll show you the IKEA hack version that cost 3$ sound better?  

step 1

I found supper inexpensive coasters from IKEA at 1.99 each. I didn’t want to have the lip on the coaster so I cut it off.  Cork is very easy to cut.  I’m sure you could also buy a piece of cork at a craft store and use an e-xato knife to cute out shapes or a punch.

step 2

The next thing I did was to sand off the edges so that when I adhered the contact paper it would lay flat.  I wanted the shape to be more organic not perfectly round so I dug out a few divits to add character.  I’m going for a natural real look and not a perfectly perfect look.

step 3

I had a 3 inch punch that I used from the craft store using my 40% off coupon (Here’s the same one from Amazon) to create the base of the marble.  ok so far so good right?  Don’t get scared we are going to pull out the gold leafing and just glue and leaf the edges of the cork.  I would really use a heavy hand on the glue, because the cork sucks it up.  Let dry for 10 min and them apply the leafing.

Peel the contact paper off the backing and stick to the coaster.  You can add extra glue at this point if you want it to stick better.  It was looking too good and perfect so I just used an e-xato knife to cut the edges off so that it could be more natural and organic.

Now look how cute this is, wouldn’t this be cute to have at your thanksgiving table?  Look what else I decided to cover.

Project 2

This lazy Suzanne is from IKEA  yup another hack.  I called around to granite counter top places to see how much it would cost for them to cut a 2 foot piece of marble in a circle so that I could make a huge lazy Suzanne for my island, but alas it was going to be anywhere from 250$ to 350$  depending on the marble color choice.  UUUMMMM no thank you I’ll keep that on my Wishlist for now.  This version is smaller but just as cute and just as functional.

The best tip I could give you when covering round things with marble contact paper is don’t cover the sides.  its too hard to make it smooth and look like real marble.  Take a tip from Crate and Barrel and just merge the two!  first I laid the wood down on the contact paper and drew around the edge.  After cutting it out and sticking it to the top of the wood you can trim it.

Use a razor blade to carefully just trim the extra off.  If you want to finish the edges you use gold wash tape, gold leaf or stain.  I loved the look of this color of wood so I just left mine.

Project 3 

I used this same technique on this extra large picture frame.  I am tempted to stain the wood with a gray stain but I’m loving the raw look of the wood am I crazy?  might be cool stained black as well.  we will have to see where it ends up in my house for that!  

This whole project snowballed and I wanted some little frames that could be set on the table so I just grabbed some old very ugly blue ones and had at.  But here is a little trick before you try cutting the middle out for the frame.  Paint the frame white so that the parts that don’t get covered will not be too glaring.  you can also add a little sliver of marble contact paper to fill in the corners if needed.

The 99 cent IKEA frame got a gold base and to camouflage the uneven edges I just used jute and glued it with my new favorite product Bondic.   It dries instantly, is hard and its not messy like my glue gun for these tinny projects.  I’m just going to give you a little teas for my next hack this table.  Do you love it? Is it too much marble LOL?  Might move the frame to my gallery wall.  I’ll show you how to make one for your self in my next post.  Stay tune.  And as always if you do create something with your contact paper please tag me on Instagram at theglitzypear.  I’d love to see.  If you want a resource list of where to find all these products its listed below.

1. marble contact paper Amazon 
2. coasters IKEA
3. Small frames   IKEA Amazon
4. lazy suzan IKEA
5. Bondic