Jigsaw Puzzle Mosaic

by sidorthatotherguy

6.7K3511

Intro: Jigsaw Puzzle Mosaic

Cheap or free mosaic. Made this one in a few hours, including drying time.

STEP 1: Materials

Scissors
Big puzzle
Big piece of cardboard
Elmer's glue
Spray paint
Picture
Pen or pencil

The cardboard should be really big, so that you can more easily tell what the picture is. The puzzle should also be very big, to cover the big cardboard. I think it would be about 160 puzzle pieces per square foot.

STEP 2: Embiggen

Choose an image with few colors, and then embiggen it on to your cardboard. You can do this many ways, such as putting a grid over your chosen image and then a grid on the cardboard (example), or using a projector.

STEP 3: Seperate

Separate the puzzle pieces into however many different colors you need. I used tan pieces and the backs of the pieces (bluish-green) as two colors. I painted other pieces for the black ones (next step).

STEP 4: Background

Glue down all the pieces that will be the same color as the background. For example, on mine, I put down all the black parts first. Then use the spray paint to spray the whole thing. This may take a few coats. You can use scissors to cut pieces for the edges if you want.

STEP 5: Glue More

Glue the other colors down. The glue dries clear, so don't worry about that.

STEP 6: Peel Glue, Etc...

Put it somewhere, bask in the glory.

10 Comments

themissingpiece 11 years ago

Love this idea! We make personalized photo jigsaw puzzles and we often have puzzles that we redo and/or don't pass our rigid quality control. We usually discard of the puzzles but now will start saving them. These are awesome! I would love to have you do this on our blog for us....

The Missing Piece Puzzle Company
http://www.themissingpiecepuzzlecompany.com

sidorthatotherguy 11 years ago

I wish I had the time to do more stuff for instructables. Darn education and employment :P

CR34M3 12 years ago

This is a very cool project.
I'm busy making one of my own but have a question on the materials: what's the final dimensions of your picture and how many of the 3000 pieces did you use?

A rough idea of puzzle pieces per square metre should help others when making smaller or larger pictures.

sidorthatotherguy 12 years ago

My picture is 36x42", and I honestly have no idea how many pieces I used. I think a
good estimate is probably around 160 a square foot.

CR34M3 11 years ago

After a few months of postponing, it's finally complete. Mine measures 1.2x1.2m. Now I just need to find a good spot to hang it.

sidorthatotherguy 11 years ago

That's awesome! Obviously spent a little more time on it than i did.

CrLz 12 years ago

Very cool.

Penolopy Bulnick 12 years ago

That is really great! It is really creative and so well done. Awesome!

ChrysN 12 years ago

Nice, a great way to use those old puzzles.