Malden 9120-01 Live, Love, Laugh Glass Coaster Set

I ordered these as a gift, but after receiving them and taking a closer look, I decided not to give them. The coasters themselves look well-made, nice clear and clean glass, no chips or anything. I like the "Live, Love, Laugh" inscription, which is what actually made me choose these over other photo coasters I found on the site; it adds that touch of "these are memories" to the photos, I guess.

The main problem is the sticker (for lack of a better term) underneath, which is supposed to keep the photos in place. It's a shiny piece of plastic or vinyl of some kind, with adhesive strips on 3 of the 4 sides (one side has no adhesive so you can slide the photos in). The strips themselves look very cheap -- like they were hand-cut from a roll -- and they're kind of thick, so that some of the strips actually twisted around 90 degrees in the middle as I moved the main sticker/photo holder, trying to get the sample photo out (so I could put my own test photo in).

The worst offender is the sticker/photo holder patch itself. The coaster has 4 rounded pads at the corners, for resting on surfaces. The sticker patch has its corners trimmed so that it's rounded, supposedly so that it clears the rounded pads, but the dimensions of the patch are way off, it ends up overlapping the pads themselves. The coaster is square, yet the patch is rectangular, so it's a really poor fit. When you slip a photo in, there's so much clearance because of the thick adhesive strips and the patch riding up the pads that the photo doesn't sit at all, but moves around a lot.

I ended up not ordering more and dropping these from our gift item list really because of the very poor quality of the photo holder part. It's a decent coaster, I guess (although the fact that it has no lip means that moisture from cold drinks will inevitably drip off anyway), but it's supposed to be a photo coaster, and it fails the "photo" part miserably.

These coasters are teal. To me, in the photo, they look white. At second glance, I could see how the border looks slightly teal, but at least the photo part is clear. It is not so with the actual product, so any photo you put inside is also tinted teal. My holder was scratched and it looked like they'd been open or used by someone already and returned. Amazon only replaces these also, so you can't return them. Don't buy, they are CRAP.

heavy glass, came to me as described. shipping was a little slow and inconvenient because i ordered it to be a christmas gift and i ordered it for christmas. nothing worse than having to explain why "your gift is on the way". but all in all the product itself is quality. just dont order from this vendor if you are pressed for time or if its around the holidays.