I am finally getting around to posting the Father’s Day gift I made for the hubs. I wanted to keep it a surprise, so I couldn’t post it beforehand. A while back when I made the Mosaic Tile Family Night Chart, the DH really thought it would be awesome to make an 8-bit Mario out of the tiles. I tried but I just didn’t have enough of the right tiles and something large enough to fit something like that on.
I did file the idea away for Father’s Day though!
First things first, you need a pattern. I was fortunate enough to find several different Mario characters laid out nicely in a grid over on Ms Premise-Conclusion. Talk about a time saver. I went with the classic Mario for this one.

I lucked out and found some small tiles in the perfect colors at Hobby Lobby. **Sigh** I LOVE Hobby Lobby! I had a 6.75″ square MDF board at the Dollar Store a while back that I had been just keeping around for the perfect project.
You can see when I did a test layout that it is a perfect fit. I also turned the “button” tiles, to give a little bit of interest.

I followed all the steps in my previous tutorial on making mosaic tiles and here is the end result.

You can definitely see Mario but I was a little unhappy with the amount of space between tiles. Listen closely so you don’t have to go through the same thing. These particular tiles were wider at the base than they were at the top. Sort of like this trapezoid below, although not so steep.

Having never used this type of tile before I didn’t think through the fact that this meant there would be more grout between the tiles at the top than there was at the bottom. Consequently I placed my tiles too far apart. I should have put them right next to each other and then I would have ended up with about 1/2 as much grout between tiles.

The DH really loved it though. That is what counts. Maybe I’ll even try a different character for his birthday! I am going to staple some ribbon to the back so he can hang it in his cubicle.

Recommended Reading:

Mosaic Tile Family Night Chart Mario Father’s Day Card 2012 Mario Father’s Day Printable