Tea Party creations: beautiful mosaics with afternoon tea templates

A few years back, I completed a 30 day drawing challenge. Before I knew it, most of the objects for my 30 day drawing challenge were from my china tea cabinet. Obviously it was a favourite topic of mine, being an admirer of all things vintage. Amongst my finds for drawing was teapots, sugar bowl, teacups and saucers, milk jugs, plates, decorative tea strainer and lots of spoons! I then thought, wouldn’t it be great to use these drawings and turn them into mosaic afternoon tea templates?

Using your mosaic afternoon tea templates

Unlike the mosaic cupcake templates, the mosaic afternoon tea templates were created once I had developed the surface pattern design collection. I was quite happy with the motif drawings used in the afternoon tea collection and thought they would make for great mosaic templates.

As there were quite a few drawings, this provided the option of creating both simple and complex mosaic designs.  

How to use the mosaic afternoon tea template designs

When using the mosaic afternoon tea templates, there is the option to create afternoon tea items (teapots, milk jugs, plates, cup and saucer) as small or large as you like by:

• Expanding the design into a larger piece with multiple afternoon tea templates to create your own unique design.  
• Creating your mosaic on a small tile or frame, making it a quick project.
• Framing your chosen afternoon tea mosaic to hang in a kitchen or dining room as feature wall piece.
• Using the final product as a decorative tile on a table, backsplash, or coaster.

There are several options for using the mosaic templates:

• Free hand drawing – draw the design free hand directly onto the mosaic surface. If desired, use your creative license to adjust to your individual style.
• Print and cut design – place the cut out design on the mosaic surface and draw around design lines. Increase or decrease design size by adding or removing the desired size (cm, mm, inches) evenly on each element.
• Print and place – using the printed design, place it directly under the mosaic substrate (glass, picture frame, mesh) and apply mosaic materials.

Creating plates on plates

When designing the mosaic round plates on a rectangular shaped plate, I opted for a simple, scattered pattern. Having multiple plates of different sizes, meant the design was going to be busy. To reduce the ‘busyiness’ I deliberately chose limited colours with the larger plates in the same colour, then let the crockery designs shine through.

I interspersed the white background with delicate florals.

The teapot on the silver tray

Instead of cutting out and tracing the teapot on the silver tray as I had with the ‘plates on a plate’ design, I drew the teapot freehand. I was mindful, as I had been when drawing the original design, to maintain the round shape of the teapot.

NOTE: when you draw your design freehand – don’t worry if it is messy with lines in all the wrong places. Just remember your substrate will be covered in mosaics soon enough!  

Playing with the designs

Creating the templates for the afternoon tea collection turned out to be a lot of fun. Some of the original objects used in the drawings had rather complex pattern designs. However by simply looking at the shape of the item, I was able to turn this shape into a simple and easy to use mosaic design.

By approaching the templates in this way, each item could be used as a mosaic design in a multitude of ways. All that you need to do is add in a variety of materials such as glass tiles, broken ceramics, beads, jewelry or even recycled materials. Then you too will have a lovely, finished mosaic piece!