Back in January I was asked to collaborate with a local business on a how-to demo for a home decor project. Basically, a local marketing expert and a paint supply business wanted someone to demo the business’s products by using them for a DIY project. It sounded like fun and coincidentally I had been meaning to fix my patio table anyway. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone.

About the table: We inherited a patio table with a missing glass center when we got this house and we wanted to replace the glass with a wood top. Steve had gone so far as to cut out the plywood for the project and now we were hemming and hawing about what kind of tile to use and should we paint them or try to mosaic something together out of what we already had, and lots of other things–amazing how complicated one little project can be–and no surprise, the project was in limbo until we made some decisions.

Since the demo needed to be simple enough for anyone to do and it needed to use paint rather than tile, I decided that this was the solution to our patio table design problems. I designed some tile-sized stencils to use in place of tiles and then picked a color palette based on ideas I’d found on Pinterest.

My fellow collaborators and I eventually decided that rather than doing an entire table top, the demo would use one stencil to decorate a small 8×8″ piece of wood to hang on a wall. I enlisted the help of another local business to cut the stencils for us, the paint place mixed up the paint colors and provided the applicators, and the marketing expert took care of the video production.

After the initial trial run, which enlisted family members and friends to participate in the paint-along and was surprisingly a lot more fun than I expected, I got some nice feedback on the design (see the chickadee stencil below) and used that to make some changes to all the rest of the tiles. In a nutshell, I needed to simplify the stenciling part of the project to try to make it as foolproof as possible.

Since then, the collaboration part of the project has been put on indefinite hold, so I’ve decided to forge ahead with the table top on my own. It’s starting to warm up outside and I need to have a place to set my cocktail down once Steve and I resume our nightly drinks-on-the-deck ritual. The table top must go on!

Here are my stencil designs and the tabletop layout I’m going to do. The middle tile will have a hole in it where the umbrella goes through, but otherwise, it’ll look pretty much like this. I think it’s going to be cool.

I wanted tiles that reflected where we live out here in the woods, so there’s a squirrel, a chickadee, a woodpecker, a bear, a coyote, a deer and a moonrise. What do you think?

Maybe down the road I’ll do another set that’s all about living by Lake Michigan. I could do some dunes, a sunset, a wave, a boat, maybe even the carferry chugging along in the distance. I’m thinking a backsplash in the kitchen would be the perfect place for them.