Repurposed Art

Last year we put together a quick table out of plywood and landscape timbers for our four-year-old to use on the porch - he mostly ate his lunch at it. After a summer of chocolate milk spills, it was looking pretty rough, and since we were freshening up the rest of the porch, we decided to refinish the table by adding a new, decorative top. We toyed with the idea of tiling it, but then decided to do a mosaic using leftover glass pieces from various stained-glass projects, most of which we inherited from my mom! I started by painting the table legs a bright happy teal to complement the colors of the glass and priming the table surface white so that we'd have a clean background under the glass.

And then came the fun part - I completely underestimated how long it would take to fill a 2x3 space with abstract glass pieces placed in a random, yet aesthetically pleasing pattern.
I figured it would take 3, maybe 4 hours tops, but in the end it was closer to 10 hours with help from my husband before I was satisfied.  Another 3-4 hours to glue the pieces down, and we were ready to grout.

We used a grit-free white grout to help keep the colors bright and maintain the smooth surface. Once the grout was cured, my husband added a metal edger followed by some teal-painted moulding to finish off the top and protect little fingers from sharp edges.

And the leftover pieces were turned into sun catchers!