I'm always on the lookout for new crafts and hobbies, especially ones that involve presenting photographs in a novel way. I've noticed one craft that stores seem to be pushing as the "next big thing" in picture presentations is this craft where you mount a picture to a tile board and glaze it with what appears to be a polymer glaze. The end result is something that looks like ceramic tile. I thought that this might be an interesting thing to do with some of my photographs, so I bought one of these kits to see how hard it is.

The kit came with a 7x7 inch piece of fiberboard with grooves on one side, as well as some sanding and cleaning supplies and a small box of the polymer glaze. Most importantly, the kit came with a decent set of instructions. The basic idea of the project was pretty easy. First, you sand and paint the board, then you glue your picture on. Finally, you coat it with the polymer coating to create the glazed effect (and also to waterproof and provide heat resistance to the finished piece).

Although I bought the kit last Winter, I had to wait until the weather improved because the optimal temperature for using the polymer glaze is about 70 degrees, plus I needed a well-ventilated area to pour it. Unfortunately, since then I forgot how much I paid for the thing, which is going to seriously affect any cost-benefit analysis I want to do. Anyway, for those of us in cold climates, this is clearly a summer project, so if this is the sort of thing you want to make as a Christmas gift or for a Winter birthday, you're going to have to engage in some serious early planning. On the bright side, I didn't find the process particularly time consuming- it took me only a couple of hours spread out over a weekend to finish.

One challenge for a project of this type was picture selection. What makes this project neat is the faux-tile grooves running through it, but those very grooves also chop up a picture into four sections- it's like looking out a window with a wooden frame. The instructions recommended against pictures with faces or small details, since the process of cutting the photo can distort it. I would imagine any photo with a center focal point wouldn't work, either, since the grooves would obscure it. You will also want a photo that has something going on in all four quadrants, so that each individual tile is interesting to look at.

I figure this type of project lends itself better to patterns or textures rather than to actual photos, so I used a picture I took of a bed of Fall leaves. It was busy in all four quadrants, and there's no real focal point for the grooves to get in the way of. I enhanced the photo by running it through a red filter in my imaging software to make it more vivid, and so it would better match the red spray paint I was using to paint the fiberboard with. I had already chosen red as my paint color because, basically, that was the only color I had available without going to the store. That was the reason I went with an Autumn theme in the first place. The instructions suggested that I painted the tile board the color of the darkest prevalent color in the photo, so I made sure the darkest prevalent color would be red.

After the paint dried, I printed and cut my photograph using my chop-style paper cutter. This part required some measuring before cutting, which I invariably screw up. The grooves on the board went right down the middle of each side and were 2/16ths of an inch, thick. So, I cut each corner to be 3 7/16ths by 3 7/16ths inch. Well, the second time, I cut them that size, the first time I cut them 3 7/8ths X 3 7/8ths and had some space left up top. One thing I had to make sure I did since I was working with a pattern is to remember which sides line up, because I wanted to make it look like the pattern continued from one tile to the next tile. After I cut the pieces, I glued them to the board. After gluing them on, I started to think that maybe I should've stayed with the original cut I made, because my pieces hung very slightly over the edges of the board, which was somewhat messy looking.

The next day, I was ready to pour on the polymer glaze. The kit came with rubber gloves, and the instructions on the glaze (or clear-coat, really) suggested that I use safety goggles and work in a well-ventilated area. These aren't typically comforting instructions for me, because I have an aversion to using strong chemicals. Still, it seems most clear-coats are rather unpleasant to work with, and I was looking to use a coat that would be waterproof and heat-resistant, so I decided to try it out, anyways. I put on the safety gear, mixed the two bottles of liquid in the kit thoroughly for a few minutes and poured it on top of the tile board. It actually was pretty easy to spread around- I used a piece of heavy paper. The major issue was that all that mixing created a ton of bubbles. This was expected, and the instructions suggested I blow on them, pop them with something, or push them off the edge. I took care of some of the bubbles but was eventually overwhelmed. The instructions recommend elevating the tile board on a set of paper cups so the excess polymer would drip right off. I did that and the excess did drip off for awhile. What the instructions didn't say was that you should somehow wipe or spread out those drips before they harden, or you'll get little plastic hardened drops that you later have to sand or knife off somehow.

To create the actual tiling effect, ten minutes after I poured the polymer I took a piece of paper and ran it a few times down the grooves. After that, I left the tile board alone and out of the way for a full day and a half while the polymer coating finished hardening. The hardened finish is clear and pretty durable, except that I left a few bubbles in it which show up if you look closely. In the end, though, the tile board really does appear to look like real tile. The clear polymer coat gives the top of the craft a rather professional look. From above, it doesn't look handmade at all.

From the sides, however, it doesn't look as good. The examples I've seen in stores show the sides glazed like the top, but I'm uncertain on how they were able to glaze the sides. The instructions don't really mention how to handle the sides at all. My sides had a few polymer drips, especially around the grooves. A frame of some sort can cover up the sides, providing one can put together a 7x7 frame of comparable thickness. I think they might sell matching frames near these tile kits at the store. In any case, without some sort of treatment or frame, the wooden sides of the tile board break the illusion of real tile that the top so accurately creates.

Despite this, I thought the end product was pretty sharp, and overall, I was happy with this project. I showed my tile board to some friends, and most thought it looked pretty good. The tiling effect is rather neat, but I think the real breakthrough from this experiment is learning to use the polymer coating. The coating is heat resistant and waterproof, which may allow me to expand beyond wall coverings and produce coasters and trivets, which are much more functional as gifts. In fact, I was at a crafts store recently and now they are selling fiberboard trays and coaster sets for this type of project. One friend of mine suggested another possible use of this project is to create a custom back splash in a kitchen or bathroom- in other words, actually use this fake tile as fake tile.

Cost-wise, this project wasn't that bad- the tile fiberboard appears to be a little pricey, but if you're not interested in faking tile and more interested in just having polymer-coated items, you can probably use any sort of backing. The polymer itself was about $6 for a kit that covers a square foot, so it's a little expensive, too. You can get larger kits that cover up to 16 square feet for $21, or $1.31 per square foot. All the other items involved were common items like spray paint and sandpaper. Next time I try a project like this one, I'll try to run some decent cost analysis, but just as a craft you can probably get the cost down to under $10 an item, and if you were making larger batches I think it's feasible to get below $5 per 7x7in. item. So, if there's ten people on your Christmas list you could probably give them all a nice trivet for $50 and four hours of your time over the course of a warm weekend.

I'll probably explore this type of craft again in the future, as long as the warm weather holds...