Holiday Buffet Tile Menu Tags

For many years, my wife has hosted an annual Christmas Tea. The food, friendship, and fellowship is amazing and is one of the things that really helps the ladies who come (and my wife) feel like Christmastime has arrived.

With all of the food (she does it more or less like a “high tea,” she has thermal servers of two different types of tea, coffee, and wassail, all in thermal servers, most of which are holiday themed, but they don’t have anything on them to specify what is IN them.

Always looking for things to use my ‘Forge for I asked if she wanted menu tags for this year’s tea. She originally declined, then remembered that everyone always asks what beverages are in each of the thermal servers. Since she typically has the same hot beverages each year, we decided to try something a little more permanent: Tile!

I’ve included a mosaic snapshot of all 4 tiles, but the photos didn’t turn out quite as nice as they are in real life (at least on my iPhone).

Here they are in context of the thermal servers.

The source for the tiles is actually a set of Datile Mosaic Tiles from Home Depot.

The square of 15 rectangles retails for $2.98 – so it’s about 20 cents per tile.

Method used was:

1. a slow engrave to give enough depth to the tile,


2. Fill engrave and surrounding area with a paint pen


3. Scrub off with a magic eraser


4. Spray on a sealer coat (or two).

(I’ll share pictures of the food spread later - those pics are on the good camera, which is in the middle of the party!)