I’m one of those people who usually likes to have a snack and a drink nearby when I’m watching TV or reading on the couch in our family room, so having coasters for the coffee table was a necessity for me.

I got a set for free from a friend who had bought them, never used them, and was planning to get rid of them. They’re picture coasters, where you can add pictures in the plastic sleeves and slide them into the glass-frame coaster.

The coasters were nice, but I didn’t know about adding photos. Who was I supposed to put pictures of? Family? Friends? Maybe some wedding pictures? It seemed a little strange to take a nice photo, stick it in a coaster, and then set a drink on top of it. Plus, most of my photos are on my phone or my computer, and I didn’t really want to get them printed only to cut them up and put them in the coaster frame.

And then I thought of a better idea: paint swatches!

I had recently painted my bathroom. I hadn’t been sure what color I wanted, so I picked up quite a few color swatches from my local hardware store. I’d finally decided on a color, but I’d kept the swatches in case I wanted to use any of those colors in another room of our house.

I took a coaster frame out of a coaster and traced it on several different colors of paint swatches, then cut them out. I angled the frame so some of the cutouts would be diagonal, while others would be horizontal or vertical. I had four coasters and used color swatches of four different colors.

If you don’t have paint swatches on hand, any colored or patterned paper would work as well.

Best of all, the project was completely free and only took a few minutes of time, but it gave me some functional coasters and added a little color to my mostly-neutral family room.