The Starry Night Mosaic Table

Step 9: Build the Mosaic

Because we didn't want to be limited in building time, we built the mosaic first, then use the tile adhesive to hold it in place.  To accomplish this, and to make sure everything was as exact as possible, we built the mosaic without any adhesive directly on the board that would eventually be the table top.

First, since I knew we would have to flip this over at some point, I built a little lip around the edge of the board.  This was removed later, so it didn't matter how it looked.

Next, Shianne worked from a copy of The Starry Night and roughed out the basic design in pencil on the board.  I thought this was brilliant, I wouldn't have thought to do that!  Once done, we set up the board and various tubs of tiles in front of the couch, put on a movie, and she got to work!  She told me later it would have been nice if we'd found a way to have a single smaller handheld container, but we couldn't think of a way to do that.  Here's a time lapse video of her building the mosaic:


It was mostly a matter of choosing the right colors and shapes from the variety that India and I had smashed up.  There were a few times I took a piece back to the shop and tried to chip off the bottom or break it to make it fit better, but mostly Shianne used what she had to create the picture.

This is another place where I could have saved us some trouble.  Due to the shape of the plates, some of the shards stuck up, quite a bit above the other pieces.  I really should have broken them down more and made sure nothing stuck up!  I ended up having to use three times as much epoxy resin as I thought I would to cover them all the way.