Tea coasters of wood

Looking for some small projects of wood, I came across on Pinterest dot com, this:

I had been cutting the long branches from the Almond tree to firewood size from my friend Ramu's hand saw.  

Take a close look at the beautiful teeth and smile!

The above is a larger mature branch.  While cutting this I saw a nice shape and 'rings'.  Why not make a tea coaster I thought.  I cut one slice to see how it would be.  It came with perfect and uniform thickness with no slant!  I did a few more having enjoyed that feel!!

The tree branch was pruned only two months ago.  Moisture in the branches takes more time to dry if not cut.  So I kept the slices in the sun to dry.  

I hung-stored the remaining portion of the branch in the '7' position in the picture below.

When the slices dried, the wood shrunk and the bark in some places got detached.  So I removed the bark.  I sanded both sides with 180 and 320 paper.  I tried colourless polish, but was not satisfied. Leaving them as they are would be nice I decided.  Here it is.

After I had made, I saw in an exhibition [north-east bamboo craftsmen] such coasters etc on sale!  See picture. 

My thanks to Ramu for making this pleasure project possible apart from the tree-branch cutting one which was more important.  Also hats off to German quality product, 'Wolf -Garten' pruning saw!