A festive mosaic sweatshop

In our quest for meaningful, heartfelt (yet cheap) Christmas presents, R and I decided that this year we would make mosaics for our friends. Usually we do a baking marathon and give our nearest and dearest Tupperwares full of festive delicacies, but the logistics of hauling all those baked goods from Ottawa all the way back home without them getting stale or broken seemed a bit tricky. Small, stackable mosaics seemed like the way to go. As luck would have it, we came across these great little plates at The Bay (of all places!) and they were a real steal. Now all we had to do was mosaic them…

Mine came together fairly quickly because I used fairly big pieces of glass, but R was a bit more ambitious. There were a few cut fingers (mostly mine), more than a few expletives uttered out of sheer frustration (mostly hers), and 2 sore necks from bending over our projects for hours. Yes, it was a veritable Christmas mosaic sweatshop over here. Oh, and wouldn’t you know it, she hates the grouting and polishing too, so guess who got stuck doing that!

I think R did a fabulous job on her mosaics, especially considering it was her first time – she’s got a great eye (not that I’m biased or anything). I also found it really interesting to see how different our styles were.