I keep a jar of glass scraps the way other people keep a junk drawer. I can't throw the little pieces away, and I never quite know what to do with them. This is what I finally did with mine. I grabbed a plain ceramic dish from Dollar General for three dollars, dumped out the jar, and turned the whole lot into a bright, one-of-a-kind mosaic trinket tray. It lives by my sink now and holds my rings while I do the dishes. It's beginner-friendly, it's cheap, and it uses up a mess you were probably hanging onto anyway.
Gather your bits
- A small ceramic dish (thrifted works), and wood or china both take a mosaic beautifully
- Glass scraps: stained glass, broken bits, or store-bought mosaic tiles
- Tile nippers or a strong glass cutter
- Safety glasses and gloves: not optional, glass bites
- Adhesive: E6000, Weldbond, or a mosaic-specific glue
- Grout
- A sponge and a rag
- Optional: grout sealer, or UV resin and a UV light
Plan the layout first
Before a drop of glue touches anything, lay your pieces out on the dish and shuffle them around until you like it. I go for chunky pieces in a few coordinating colors, with a darker piece in the center for a little contrast. Don't chase perfect. A mosaic is supposed to feel playful: the charm is in the not-quite-matching.
Nip your pieces to fit
Glasses and gloves on. Use the nippers to trim pieces so they follow the curve of the dish, mixing up the shapes and sizes and leaving little gaps between them for the grout lines to live in. Those gaps are part of the look, so don't crowd everything edge to edge.
Grout to a peanut-butter consistency: any wetter and it'll slump right back out of the gaps.
Glue it down
Put adhesive on the dish, then a dab on the back of each tile, and press them into place. Work around the dish until it feels balanced. Then walk away and let it dry completely, really completely, per whatever your glue bottle says. Rushing the cure is the one way to wreck this.
Grout, wait, and buff
Mix your grout to that peanut-butter consistency and press it into every gap with a gloved finger or a sponge until they're all filled. Let it sit ten or fifteen minutes, then gently wipe the excess off the glass with a damp sponge. Once it's dried down a little more, buff the surface with a dry cloth. That's the moment the hazy grout film lifts and the color underneath comes roaring back. It's my favorite part.
Seal it, if you like
Once the grout has fully cured, a coat of grout sealer makes it tougher, which is worth doing for anything living near water. I sealed mine with UV resin and a UV light for a nice glassy finish, but that's a flourish, not a requirement.
Use it for rings and earrings, paperclips on a desk, a spoon rest by the stove, whatever you need caught. And if you want to send it in a softer, cottage-core direction, try it on a piece of thrifted floral china instead of plain glass.
First published in my Gulf Coast Woman column - read the original in the digital issue →
