Upcycling Aesthetic: Rustic

For my upcycling project I am going to make wooden coasters from a tree branch with a rustic aesthetic. The reason I chose to do this project is mainly that I love the look of wood furniture in a modern way and creating wooden coaster would add some cool accents to the rest the furniture in my house. I currently have two options on how to approach this project.

Option 1:

The first one is going to a tree and cutting off a branch, and using that branch to create cross sections of it as the coasters. This is the simplest version of my goal as the shape would be natural and any irregular parts of the branch can be seen as “natural” rather than mistake. The only difficult part about this plan is finding a tree that I am allowed to cut a branch off of as I do not own any property at the moment.

As you can see in the above image, the branches create their own unique patterns based on how the tree grew. Each coaster would be unique and interesting. This makes it my first choice of action as it better fits the rustic aesthetic.

Option 2:

The second potential approach to this project would be to take simple pre cut wood and use that as a coaster. The problem with this is that it would be way to simple and boring in my opinion. If I were to do this option I would want to at least take a variety of different types of wood and mesh them together to achieve a more unique and interesting look. Using some wood glue and cutting the wood to size and shape, makes this process a little more time consuming although still very feasible for the scope of this project. There are a variety of ways I could orientate the wood to create a cool design, however for a more rustic aesthetic, I will probably end up going more simple.

Comparing this option to the prior, there is a clear reason as to why its the second. While it does look nice and interesting, it also clearly looks man made, while the branch approach looks more natural. While both would be a fun and inspiring design choices, for me, approaching this project with the first option peaks my interest to combining this project with the rustic aesthetic a priority.

References:

https://www.thespruce.com/wood-coasters-diy-6823541

https://gardentherapy.ca/natural-branch-coasters/

https://www.chiselandfork.com/wooden-coasters/.