Hello DIY Hive people! Today I want to share with you the upcycling of two old trays into beautiful (if I may say so myself) mozaic trays. I had never done any mozaic pieces before; these are my very first ones.
One day I was walking on the beach in Da Nang (Vietnam) and I found some broken tiles. I asked one of my friends if he had any idea what I could do/make with these broken tiles. He told me I could possibly smash them into very small pieces to make a mozaic. Then, I started looking online to get ideas of what kind of mozaic piece I wanted to intent to make. I saw some beautiful mozaic trays! Trays it is...
I went to a second-hand furniture store were after digging in between all the old kitchen supplies and what more I found two old wooden trays, perfect to layout the tile pieces and make a mozaic. Afterwards, I also got some handy utensils to help me complete the mozaic tray.
Materials used:
- Broken tiles
- Grout
- Old trays
- Mirror pieces (optional)
- Hammer
- Sponge
- Superglue
For the first tray aside from broken tiles I also used some broken mirror pieces (I found a big mirror piece on the side of the road near my place). First, I broke the big pieces into smaller ones, then I placed the pieces on one of the trays. Before placing the pieces, I also drew a sun with sun rays on the tray to give me a guideline on how and where I wanted to place my tile pieces. Once satisfied with the placement, I glued each piece individually to the tray.
When finished, I gave the tray a little shake to see if each piece was well attached to the tray. The tray still had some gaps and spaces where I had decided to incorporate some mirror pieces. The mirror pieces were not the same height as the tiles so in order to place them at the same level as the tiles I had to put a little bit of grout under each mirror piece to make it all look even. This took some time. When the grout underneath the mirror pieces was dry the tray was ready to be fully grouted. I filled up all the gaps between the mirror pieces and the tiles, covering the whole tray with grout (white grout). With a slightly wet sponge I started slowly removing the grout from the top, to reveal the tiles and mirror pieces, making sure to clean the sponge after each swipe.
(The tray all covered with grout)
The last part, was the most exciting part for me, because I could finally start seeing how my mozaic was going to look like.
For the second tray I used similar techniques and materials, only for this tray I made the gaps between each tile piece tighter than with my first mozaic and I also painted the borders white, so the whole tray would match the white tiles.
I really enjoyed upcycling these two old trays into mozaic pieces. At the moment, I’m looking for an old coffee table to do some mozaic work on, stay tuned for the next project😍.
PS: to checkout the videos of my finished trays
https://www.facebook.com/1157255131/videos/a.10226332319151823/266232492190531
https://www.facebook.com/1157255131/videos/a.10226332319151823/372135768041170
(some images were made possible with the help of canva)