I'd have to say that this project was the most expensive and the most annoying/time consuming/pain in the rear project that I've done to date on the house.
If you ever have thought of doing a mosaic table, I have one word for you. DON'T! Now, don't get me wrong. It was fun. The designing part. The gluing part was entertaining as well. The grout and cleaning part....not so much.
I've been wanting to do a mosaic table since 2010 maybe. When William and I frequented home improvement stores together, I found a round wooden piece of something. I really don't know what it's supposed to be used for but I saw it and wanted to create a side/mosaic table with it. Fast forward at least two years and I've still be thinking of it. Couldn't remember which store it was at so I went to both in search of it. With the help of sales associates, I found it at Home Depot. I think it was aisle 17 if you choose to venture into this project. It measures 1 inch think and 17 3/4 inches across.
Picked out my colors of tiles at Michaels and got to work doing research to figure out if I wanted to have a design, have it a free for all, or something completely different. I ended up with "silver sparkly" square tiles and three different shades of purple tiles that are all differnt shapes. The bottle in this picture is the adhesive needed.
I knew I wanted the fun silver tiles to be the border for whatever I ended up doing. I started by making the border only to realize that some of the tiles in the bag are smaller. I put them aside and then thought that they would be helpful in creating a center for a flower. I used that roll of masking tape to get a decent circle and then free handed the flower petals. Being that I had positive responses from friends, I never moved away from the flower design to a more abstract one.
Those bags I have shown above...clearly weren't enough to create this masterpiece. Back to Michaels to get more. Now there is a side story with this one. The Michaels that I normally go to only had about three packages left. At the time I was buying these there was a 50% coupon available. I noticed though, that for the second time when I went there, a bag of tiles was in the wrong spot....covering the tiles that I needed. So my fear was that someone else was doing a project like me and needed the purple tiles and were hiding them from everyone else so that they could come back every day and get them for 50% off. I grew very worried about this because I found out that they were not only not on order to get more...but they were nowhere to be found in any Michael's warehouse! This meant that I needed to buy them all....full price. Yes, it hurt but my teacher discount helped a little. Anyway, I went to three different Michaels (one 17 miles away) to get enough tiles for this stupid table.
While doing my shopping, I saw these tiles on clearance and started to ponder if I should get them for the middle of the flower.
Purchased, heard back from my craft helper Kelly and decided that I should stick with what I had. I think the word she used was sophisticated....yea that screams me :op
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| Finished flower and border |
Now the issue of figuring out what color I wanted to do for the background. I was thinking blue or green. Blue for the sky or green for grass/petals. Kelly suggested to go with blue. Uh oh, which blue?
I went with neither of them! I found small perfectly squared ones at the Michaels 17 miles away. Purchased 4 bags and got to work. Well, my other crafting buddies said that with the blue I was just adding in another color to the room which was basically only purple.
Took those back to the store and was going to look for a neutral color. Think browns. Think, BORING! I had three choices but quickly got rid of the neutrals. I was trying to decide between an opal and a pearly black (think oyster shell). Everyone said to go with the pearly black on the left when they saw it in the picture. My issue was that when it was in person....it was blending in with the flower and not letting the flower pop out at you. Pictures on phones do not do anything justice, so I actually drove around with this is my car to show the family at dinner and then friends in the parking lot at work!
Once people saw it in person that agreed that the opal was the way to go. One downfall for going with this type of tile instead of one of those two blues was these are thinner. Everything else was all the same width which meant everything was perfectly even. Now, the opal tiles were going to make it an uneven table. Oh well.
Being that it was not a perfectly even table, I knew it wasn't going to be very easy to grout. I purchased the craft grout at Michaels in white and started with the outside. For some reason, I knew it shouldn't be as hard as it was...the grout seemed to be slightly dried out but I thought to myself well maybe this is how "craft grout" is.
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| Looking crusty with the craft grout |
I let the grout dry for a full day and while hiding in the gbasement during a tornado warning I rubbed off the haze on the stones which took forever! Sadly, I noticed that there are some cracks in the grout but again, not something I'm going to stress about. Finished the project by attaching it to the bar stool. I thought of using heavy duty Velcro in case I decided to fix the crack. But then I realized that yea, no I won't be playing with this project again! So I ended up just attaching it with E6000 glue. I left the bar stool the original color because I didn't want to mess with sanding and painting. Figured that it matched the bookcase in the room so not a big deal.
Now I just have to pick out a lamp (or move the lamp from my bedroom in there and get new lamps for my room) and have an overnight guest to test it out!
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