Habitat TV

Preserve the life of your tabletop with a cute and quick-to-make painted trivet or coasters.

You will need:

• Round cork trivet and/or coasters
• Braided natural cotton rope or similar – ours was 7mm in diameter and came in 15m lengths
• Hot glue
• Scissors
• High quality painter’s masking tape
• Resene testpots in Resene Raging Bull, Resene Tangaroa and Resene Double Alabaster
• Resene testpot brush
• Small flat artist’s brush

Step 1 Using hot glue, affix the end of your length of rope firmly to the top edge of your cork trivet. Continue gluing the rope along the edge until it begins to coil. From there, you can use less glue as you go to tack it in place. Work slowly, keeping the rope flat and snug against the previous row.

Step 2 Once you have covered approximately half the trivet with coiled rope, paint what you have glued down so far in Resene Raging Bull using a testpot brush in two coats, making sure to get into all the nooks and crannies and around the outside edges. Use a hair dryer to speed up the drying process.

Step 3 Once the second coat of Resene Raging Bull has dried, paint up the rope using two coats of Resene Tangaroa far enough to make the next coil on the inside of your trivet. It’s a good idea to use a hair dryer again to speed up the drying process, as you will need to hold the rope up as it dries. By using this method, you’ll easily get a cleanly defined line between the two colours. 

Step 4 Once the second coat of Resene Tangaroa has dried, continue to coil and tack down the rope using hot glue. Once you get to the centre of the trivet, trim the excess rope and tack the end down so that it stays flat.

Step 5 Paint the remainder of the unpainted rope in two coats of Resene Tangaroa. Use a hair dryer to speed up the drying process.

Step 6 Once the second coat of Resene Tangaroa has dried, use high quality painter’s tape to mask around four wedge-shaped sections of the area painted in Resene Raging Bull. Then, paint them in two coats of Resene Double Alabaster. Allow your new trivet to dry completely, preferably overnight, before using it. 

Top tip: Make a matching set of coasters with the same steps as above using skinnier rope.