Mosaic Table Tops

Years ago I was so blessed to trade a clay pot that I had mosaiced with pieces of tiles.  I received 3 boxes of tiles that had pictures painted on them and was so excited.  The tiles were beautiful!

That was before the blog so I do not have any how to photos.   However, I did break up some of the tiles with the tool pictured below.  The ones I could not cut, I put inside a thick towel and hammered them into small pieces.  Just don't hammer too hard or the pieces will be very very tiny and unusable.  I used Henry's products to glue the pieces down to the pieces of wood that were cut to the size I estimated; and to make the grout with that filled in all the spaces.  I have since changed adhesive and grout products....not for any specific reason, just wanted to try out different ones.

 This tool is also available at building supply stores.

To estimate the size, I laid the whole tile pieces on a big piece of wood, estimate space I wanted to frame around them, and Jerry cut the wood to that size.  I also estimated how much space I wanted between the tiles that make the painting.   I then glued the bigger tiles down and the cut up pieces and glued them on.  The tiles do not need to have a lot of space between them as the grout can easily fill in narrow spaces.

Sidenote:  The wood warped several times over all these years and I had to redo each table top until a friend told me about HardiBacker Board that professional tilers use.  It does not warp and is fantastic to work with so I did redo each of them the last time on it...Yea!)

I used 4 cylinder blocks to lay the final mosaic tabletop piece on and they sit outside as end tables on our patio.  They have lasted remarkably well even though they sit outside in all kinds of weather.  I completely enjoy seeing them on our patio, using them and seeing them shine when I clean them.

 The 6 tiles in the middle of this mosaic all had beautiful flowers painted on them.  The rest of the tiles had leaves painted them.  I chose to surround the flower tiles with pieces of tiles with the leaves painted on.  It reminded me of a garden.  You can see the cylinder blocks sticking out behind the mosaic.  They usually sit directly under the mosaics but did it this way for the photo.

A closeup of the pretty flower paintings on the tiles.

Another closeup of the other 4 flower tiles.

 The next mosaic table top is a scene, a very peaceful scene of a village, perhaps in Mexico.  This is Jerry's favorite.  You might notice the crack in one of the painted tiles.  It was broken but I didn't mind....just put the pieces on broken to create the painting.

 A closeup of part of the scene.

 Another beautiful closeup of this scene.

Creating mosaics is so enjoyable and relaxing.....