McKinley – mosaic table

I had been intending to buy some kind of pedestal table for the McKinley’s kitchen, but recently came up with an idea to make my own. I paid a few dollars at Goodwill for a butterfly windchime from Pier 1 (still in the box). It had a round, flat glass top and seven glass butterflies that hung down on invisible thread. One of the butterflies was broken, but I thought I could cut the others off and make them into Christmas ornaments or suncatchers. When I did this, I was left with the round top, which seemed like a good size for a dollhouse table top. I have always loved Pier 1’s mosaic tables… I have a coffee table in that style, and had been eyeing a dining table that stopped being available in their stores before I had a house big enough for it… so, once again, I decided to live out my life-sized dreams in miniature.

Rather than building legs, I tried resting the table top on top of a Mackintosh reading table I bought last year and so far have found nothing to do with. Initially this was just to see how the glass piece would look as a table top, but I like the effect so much I may leave it this way. I couldn’t find any good mosaic pictures at the Pier 1 website so I used Google’s image search and stumbled upon this great mosaic supply site. I went through their gallery (apparently all the work of students) and saved several mosaics that I thought might look nice. I resized them in Photoshop to match the diameter of the table top and printed them out.

The little holes in the table top are where the thread for the butterflies went through. With the mosaic in place, the holes are barely noticeable!

I looked at a bunch of pictures, and came up with four I really like. Now I can’t decide which I like best! I’m going to hold onto them for now and see which goes best with the kitchen decor (I’m planning on oak or honey colored cabinets and a green marble countertop). Even then, I may decide not to attach anything permanently so I can swap out the mosaics if I feel like it.

The chair in these pictures is just to give an idea of the table’s size… it’s not the style of chair I’ll wind up using. Some wrought iron cafe-style chairs may look nice. Here’s a shot of the table “in context”: