Disney Nerds Getting Crafty; Mosaic Donald Duck

One of the oddest side effects of Covid-19 seems to be an increase in my creativity skills.  To keep busy during these times I’ve tried a lot of different new crafts and hobbies hoping to get through the days.  One activity that was fun and I’m probably gonna try again was creating a mosaic picture.

Mosaic art is the type of art created by a pattern produced by arranging together small colored pieces of hard material, such as stone, tile, or glass.  If you’ve been to Walt Disney World and walked through the castle you seen some of the most beautiful mosaic art around.  I, of course, never even thought I was going to come close to that, but I wanted to give it a try.

I looked for an appropriate subject and was looking for a Disney theme that was not too hard.  I figured I needed to have large areas of color and not too many small areas.  Small details would be hard to reproduce and I’m sure certain colors would be tough to find.  I finally found the picture that spoke to me and seem to fit the criteria I was looking for.  Enter Nouveau Donald Duck.

For supplies I used a frame I had got at the Dollar store and it was perfect.  The clear plastic face was great because it was thick.  I ended up taping the picture right to the back of it which made it easy to start gluing pieces.  For the colored pieces of tiles, I used everyday square bathroom tile.  What is nice about bathroom tile, with Home Depot and Lowes there is a large color selection.  I did take a bit of liberty by deciding to use blue instead of purple for a background.  Just happened to have the blue on hand.

Now that I had the frame set up and I knew the colors I was going to use came the even more fun part.  I got to hit a lot of tiles with a hammer.  I used big Ziplocs to keep from making a mess.  Once I started adding tiles to the build, I used a small chisel and hammer to make the pieces smaller and to make them fit together.  I used white glue for the attaching and it worked very well.

Once I had all the little pieces in place, the next step was to tape off the frame and grout the tile.  I thought this would be hard, but just like grouting a floor, it was not.  I used some grout I had in the garage.  And there it is, Mosaic Donald Duck.  Now I need to figure out where to hang it.

What kind of crafts have you been doing to keep busy?  I’ve seen so many other crafters taking advantage of extra home, garage, and or shop time nowadays.  Share your crafts with the Disney Nerds.  Send what you’re doing with some pictures or video to ed@thedisneyenrdspodcast.com.  I will create a blog post or page on our site to display whatever you send in.