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Just Mosaics: Birdbath
Before any of you shake your heads and say, “Mmm, their measurements were a bit off on this one,” let us tell you that we know. The base was uneven, and we only really noticed that when we began working. However, being the free-spirited, give-me-a-challenge kind of people that we are (okay, we didn’t feel like taking it back), we decided to make it work for us.
As you can see, the base of the birdbath isn’t visible. That’s because we preferred to keep the focus on the bath itself and, we must admit, the base has not been completed yet. Once again, not our fault – one of our kids offered to do it and we’re still waiting!
- Just Mosaics: Birdbath
- R 15.00
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Just Mosaics: Cast-iron pot stand
At first glance, you will probably think that we are awfully clever and creative when you see how these tiles have been put together. However, we cannot take all the credit – in fact, we can take very little credit because the tiles were already put together and we simply bought a complete sheet of them.
We did cut the sheet to size though, and nipped some of the tiles down to make them fit, so there was some work involved! These sheets of tiles can be a bit pricey, so try to use them on something special.
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Just Mosaics: Chilli platter
We originally bought these chilli embellishments for a project in our first book but never got around to using them, so deep in the recesses of our minds we knew that we had them somewhere; it was just a matter of actually finding them.
Two days later, after cleaning out the entire craft cupboard and finding things long forgotten (and a few that we wish we had forgotten), we came across the embellishments. So we sat back, had a gin and tonic, discussed how best to deal with teenage eye-rolling and planned our project.
- Just Mosaics: Chilli platter
- R 15.00
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Just Mosaics: China plate planter
We bought the china plates we used for this project from a junk shop, but you may have something similar lying around at home. Don’t go using your best china though – especially if it has been passed down to you by your mother, or even worse, mother-in-law! She will not be impressed. Of course, you could say that you were carrying them to the cupboard to put them away and the dog tripped you …
If buying them, look for plates that are chipped or part of an incomplete set – that way they will be a lot cheaper. It’s no good paying a fortune for plates that are going to be broken up and put on a planter.
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Just Mosaics: Cupcake pot stand
This is definitely one of our ‘less is more’ projects, and you know how fond we are of those! Not only is the stand striking in its simplicity, it really is simple to make as there is no tile cutting at all. It was one of those rare occasions where everything just fell into place – okay, not literally. We did have to do a bit of gluing and grouting – but you know what we mean.
We toyed with the idea of putting red glass tiles around the central cupcake tile, but decided that it would somehow break the ‘flow’ of the project. We knew that we wanted to bring red in somehow and luckily, the side edges were just the right width to accommodate our design.
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Just Mosaics: Daisy-chain coat-rack thing
If you have our previous book, you will already know that, due to pre-menopause (of course the kids love to say: “Forget the ‘pre’, Mom – it’s full menopause!” which we find extremely hurtful and untrue) – Where were we again? Oh yes, due to pre-menopause, we occasionally forget the names of everyday objects, like husbands and whatever-those-things-are-that-you-hang-coats-on. It’s happened before and it’s happening again – hence the title of this project.
The rack thing was bought at one of these inexpensive home stores and we just gave it a complete makeover. We got the basic pattern for the daisy chain from Designs Galore.
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Just Mosaics: Decorative cupcake
We weren’t exactly sure what we were going to do with this wooden cupcake cut-out once we had finished applying mosaics, but we liked the shape and had the perfect tile for it, so we went ahead anyway.
It was a fun, quick and easy project to complete. And at the end of it we decided that it had not one, but two uses: it would become either a pot stand or a wall decoration.
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Just Mosaics: Floral birdhouse
The first thing that we have to say about this particular birdhouse is that the entrance does seem a tad small, so any bird that tries to set up home in it better be either really tiny or has to go on a crash diet. Having said that, we were really taken by the shape – and honestly, little details like “Will any bird ever fit in there?”
are not really that important when you like something that much. We wanted to break the tile but keep the design, and the best way to do that is to use the same method we use for breaking a plate. This ensures that you don’t end up totally confused and wondering if you are taking part in a Survivor Reward Challenge!
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Just Mosaics: Floral tealight candleholder
This is one of those projects that should have taken no time at all to complete but for some unknown reason, we dragged our heels and stopped and started it on numerous occasions. We’re not telling you this to put you off – it really isn’t a difficult task – it’s just that sometimes you work on a piece that does that to you. So don’t give up on it, simply put it aside, do something else and then go back to it.
We used a combination of ceramic and glass tiles for the candleholder, because we felt that too much of the floral tile would be a bit much – oh, and we only had one ceramic tile anyway.
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Just Mosaics: Flower stool
Working on this stool was basically a game of musical chairs because we kept switching the project back and forth between us. It was just one of those projects where we either sat and stared at it for hours, looking for inspiration, or gave up halfway due to boredom or frustration – or both! Thank goodness for partners, otherwise the job would probably never have been completed.
As mentioned in the introduction to this book, we have given a few of our old decoupage items a ‘facelift’ and this is one of them. As it already had a few coats of varnish, we sanded the stool first to key it for painting and mosaic work. The pattern for the flowers was taken from Designs Galore.
- Just Mosaics: Flower stool
- R 15.00
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Just Mosaics: Framed busts
This was another favourite project. It was a little challenging because we were working with a lot of small pieces, but we really enjoyed the mixing and matching and adding the embellishments. As is often the case, we started out with a vague idea of what we would do and it ended up completely different – in a good way though!
Our design is once again taken from Designs Galore, our favourite source book. We simply copied it to the size we wanted, which was determined by the lovely, distressed frame we came across, then we were ready to go.
- Just Mosaics: Framed busts
- R 15.00
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Just Mosaics: Framed tea-ware
We had absolutely nothing to do with these frames, but called on an artist friend, Sue Maule, to let us use something from her mosaic art collection for our book. This set of framed tea-ware was absolutely perfect and is a good example of how to combine mosaics with art.
However, if you can’t paint to save your life, there is an alternative: you can find yourself a suitable serviette and decoupage that onto the canvas instead of painting it on. We’re providing instructions on how to produce one picture, but the same technique applies to all three.
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Just Mosaics: Funky wall clock
This clock originally came from one of those cheap home stores. It was plain black and white, so we decided to give it a makeover and use the numerals as a template for our own numbers. We had one ‘dotty’ tile that we were dying to use and this was the perfect project for it because it fitted in with the round clock.
We used small tile pieces for the numbers to make them clearer as their design was already a bit obscure, and if we’d worked with bigger pieces, they would have been lost altogether.
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Just Mosaics: Gecko vase
It didn’t take too long to put this project together once we had got the hang of working with pieces that had virtually no flat edges! We would love to say that we spent many fun-filled hours collecting the perfect stones from a trickling stream out in the forest. However, this is the 21st century, and even though we do live in a small town and have access to the above natural resources, we also happen to have a rather large, national, inexpensive home store that sells bags of stones at a bargain price – so we got them there!
We raided our vast collection of scrapbooking goodies to find the gecko and were pleased to eventually give him a home, because he had been sitting in the back of a box for a couple of years.
- Just Mosaics: Gecko vase
- R 15.00
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Just Mosaics: Hand-painted lady’s tray
These hand-painted tiles are so beautiful (and expensive!) that we really didn’t want to risk ruining them by breaking them up. Using them whole and surrounding them with glass tiles made for a very quick but striking project – absolutely no cutting whatsoever!
We decided to use them on a simple black background because we didn’t want to draw attention away from them. However, you could go really bold with tiles like these and bring in a lot of colour for an entirely different look.
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Just Mosaics: Hexagonal tray
We would love to say that the design for this tray was well-planned because of our excellent understanding of, and foresight into, geometry. However, it was a complete fluke. Somewhere in the deep recesses of our minds, we remembered something about a mathematical compass and half circles, so we just started experimenting – and were pleasantly surprised at the results.
The outline of the design was completed first, using ceramic tiles cut into small rectangles. Once that was done, we decided which sections should be green and which ones should be cream.
- Just Mosaics: Hexagonal tray
- R 15.00
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Just Mosaics: Jazzy paraffin lamp
The base we used for this project is one of those very basic metal paraffin lamps that you find in most supermarkets or at those corner stores that sell, well, basically everything – from plastic floor coverings, to buckets, to pots and even sugar and maize.
We couldn’t resist the challenge of taking a basic – and dare we say ‘ugly’ – item and changing it into something that wouldn’t look out of place in a formal setting. A sort of shabby-chic-meets-rustic-glitz kind of thing.
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Just Mosaics: Love mirror
If you have read our previous craft books, you’ll know that one of us is known as the ‘Bowl Queen’ because of a fondness for decorating them. The ‘Queen’ hasn’t given up on the bowls (and platters) but has now added a new favourite to her favourites: mirrors.
We wanted a geometric design for this project, which we achieved with the triangles. However, in order to soften and break the design slightly, we added a ready-painted, wooden cut-out of the word love, available from many home decor shops (even the cheaper ones).
- Just Mosaics: Love mirror
- R 15.00
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Just Mosaics: Magazine stand
This project was a joint effort between one of our sons, Alex, and his girlfriend, Tanner. The idea for the pattern came from a jersey he was wearing – apparently, according to Google, it’s a Harlequin pattern.
It’s always great to get help from our kids because they are not bound by any rules. We may think that we aren’t either, but we are to a certain extent; we’re more inclined to try to keep our tile pieces and gaps to a standard size, whereas you can see here that it’s not always necessary.
- Just Mosaics: Magazine stand
- R 15.00
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Just Mosaics: Mini chest of drawers
This was definitely our favourite project because working on it was so much fun. It’s probably because each little drawer is different and we could get creative and mess around with the placement of the embellishments. The drawers can also be swapped around to subtly change the look of the chest.
We toyed with the idea of painting the chest black, but decided that we wanted to keep it fresh-looking, so went with white instead. However, if you want the piece to be more dramatic, use the black paint.
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Just Mosaics: Mirror candleholder
A simple design like this one, using only glass tiles, is very elegant and works extremely well on a candleholder. This is because once the candle is lit, the flame reflects off the glass, creating an attractively soft and romantic light.
We used a pack of pre-nipped mirror tiles for this project, so there wasn’t an awful lot of cutting to be done, which is just as well because it’s not as easy to cut mirror as it is to cut most other tiles.
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Just Mosaics: Mirror, mirror…
We bought this circular wooden base and mirror from a craft shop, so all that we had to do was come up with a design. The idea was to keep most of it mirror with just a touch of colour, so we decided to bring in the red but to keep it simple.
We used pre-nipped tiles for this project, so it went a lot faster than it would have if we had to cut each tile ourselves. Even the randomly shaped mirror tiles came in a pack, so we simply put the pieces together in a puzzle-like fashion and cut them here and there where necessary.
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Just Mosaics: Nude line-drawing canvases
We have used fellow authors Monique Day-Wilde and Angie Franke’s book, Designs Galore, for a number of our projects and this is one of them.
We wanted to retain the effect of simple line drawings, which is why we only used two colour tiles: one for the surround and outlines and the other for the background and bodies. We finished off the side edges with large tile pieces to keep the focus on the images.
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Just Mosaics: Old-fashioned basin
We got this basin and the tiles from our friendly potter. It has a hole in the centre, so it can be plumbed in permanently. However, we never know where out projects are going to be photographed or end up, and we wanted it to look like a classic, old wash basin anyway, so we covered up the hole. That way, it can be placed anywhere.
We have to admit that, because these tiles had been fired at a high temperature and they were pretty thick, cutting them wasn’t that easy. However, after a few mishaps, and the odd naughty word, we got to grips with the process.
