And for the Canadians: Homedepot.ca doesn’t have anything smaller (like, ZERO 4 in. tiles?!), but a box of four 6 in. x 6 in. (1 sq ft) tiles w/free shipping is the same price (with conversion) as nine of the 4 in. x 4 in. (1 sq ft) US SKU.
Home Depot will often have small (1x2, 2x4) FREE samples of various kitchen counter tops of different materials in the drawers of the kitchen displays. Great way to get small amounts of different colors and materials to try cheaply, same for the wood flooring too. My local HD had both Corian and Travertine samples.
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I use the CA glue technique in wood working for soft wood, just use some thin CA glue on the engraved area of the stone to make it solid.
Then fill the engrave with paint or resin fill, dyed to the color you want.
The CA glue I use is Starbond EM-02, I do not see why it would not work with stone.
I may go get some tiles and try it tomorrow afternoon.
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Great idea and officially stolen for my house this year.
Used the Trajan font (an Adobe font based on the Roman monument engraving).
I wiped the tiles to get rid of any dust, masked it using a 12" wde roll so I just spread them out in a big rectangle on the table and laid the masking down. Sliced between the tiles with a razor knife and ran a squeegee over the tiles. Popped them into the GF, set the height and forged using your settings. Worked great.
Pulled them out, blew out any stray dust, re-squeegeed and then applied pre-mixed RIT fabric dye using a q-tip to dab into the letters. Let it dry for a few hours (cut & weeded reindeer while I waited) and removed the masking. Didn’t really need to wait as the ones I did as a test didn’t get bleed through - just needs a couple of minutes to soak in and when the mask is dry you can weed.
Put a coat of stone sealer (from Home Depot) on using a spray bottle. It’s supposed to be good for sealing stone & tile. I may do a lacquer or urethane varnish as extra insurance against the dye running if it gets wet but I’ll do a test on some other tiles first.
Overall pretty happy. Great idea as they will be place cards until dinner and then they’re coasters 
Thanks for the idea.
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Absolutely love this! I was wondering about how to do a darker color in lighter-colored stone engravings, but never would have though of using RIT dyde. Definitely going to have to try this!
Beautiful! I finally picked up some of that tile (aside: my local Home Depot is a mess, the tiles were just thrown onto the shelves and it was almost impossible to find an intact set of 9). I’m looking forward to trying it out with some of the “rub 'n buff” that has been sitting on my shelf waiting for an application. Seems like it should be a good combo.
These turned out amazing!!
Great looking job. I especially like the font that you chose. 
Very nice result - love the dye idea for color.
henryhbk said 3 passes at full power at 340 dpi - what speed did you use?
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Mine had a couple rows of the boxes stacked. They had a couple dozen boxes. I initially thought I wanted the least variegated style - almost flat cream colored with no markings so I looked through boxes for just those. I also made sure I didn’t get any broken ones. What I found when I lasered was I preferred the ones with the patterns and natural color changes to them - especially with the colored engraves. The flat (bland?) mono-color tiles might be better for engrave only tiles but I’m not going to be so anal about trying to get “just the right” tile coloration mix next time.
These are super cheap (60 cents a tile) and easy to engrave. Coloring options are good (in addition to the 4 colors of RIT fabric dye that was premixed, the local store probably had another dozen color available in powder form that could be mixed with water and used.
They’re a nice alternative to slate coasters.
I had them full speed - 1000 zooms.
Reporting back on this - the stone sealer clears over time (it was a little cloudy in the pic in the post above) and it does create a water repellent coating on the tiles. But, because the engrave cuts through the top and exposes the internal travertine structure, the engraves don’t seal as well - I expect it’s soaking into the tile and it’s just a matter of how many more coats I’d need.
I did try wetting the tile and no issues on the field but the engrave would leave dye residue on a paper towel used to dry it off. Suggests that the dye is not water safe after only a week of drying.
Since we’ll use them as coasters tomorrow I sprayed them with a couple of coats of Helmsman Spar Urethane in a gloss finish. Home Depot $10/can 
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Minwax-11-5-oz-Clear-Semi-Gloss-Helmsman-Indoor-Outdoor-Spar-Urethane-Aerosol-Spray-33260/100199613
Dried overnight and totally sealed and glossy tile finish. No bleed through of the dye nor does it rub off on a towel when drying the coaster.
Oh, son #3 came back from school and brought many cheeses from NY State to go with snacktime tomorrow. Wife says “you wouldn’t have a cheese board in your collection of lasered ones that we could use would you?” Well, no (just donated a bunch of them to the MakerSpace for their annual holiday crafts & such fundraising sale). But a few minutes in design software and a half hour in the GF and, yes we do 
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“Age only matters if you are cheese”
…and Scotch.
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So we had a last minute addition when some cousins dropped by, and decided to stay (they said they were just going to come by for a glass of wine and say hello). So quick trip to the Glowforge, 2 tiles and before they even sat down we had travertine tiles and little stands (thank goodness CA glue dries in seconds)
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