1. The beginnings

When my adorable and insightful wife decided early in 2000 that our much needed basement remodel should also enhance my Lego hobby, one of the
issues was what to do with the beautiful oak plank-faced bar which in 25 years had never seen a drop of alcohol cross it's surface. Even though I'd designed and built the oak bar, I was excited to convert it to better fit my beloved hobby!

The bar itself was extracted during the remodelling - and then resurfaced with 48 x 48 light gray Lego baseplates, which were glued and screwed
to cover the entire three visible faces of the bar. If you plan a similar project for your home, please note that I never considered aligning the baseplates
with Lego plates or long bricks. "Eye-balling" the placement of screwholes was not perfect. The bar works well for my mosaic art - but it could be better!

2. The Mosaic Plan

Now that I had a canvas upon which to work (Note that a 32 x 32 or better yet a 48 x 48 stud baseplate make a great canvas as well.), it was time to find a picture and convert it into Lego! I typically print a copy of my picture, cartoon or drawing for reference, then pixellize the art on Photoshop or a similar art/photo program,

For a mosaic on a 48 x 48 baseplate, for example, break your picture down to 48 x 48, just a little more than twice as large as the 32 x 32 artwork for an icon maker. I then print the small pixelized picture on a full sheet of paper, so I can see and map each pixel. Let's use a. a. milne's Winnie the Pooh as an example:

3. Examples of my mosaics: They are often seasonal, so let's work our way through the year.

4. Some of the Bar Art is done for special occasions...

One of the first examples announced our vacation to Ireland in 2003 [the first appearance of the leprechaun and his pot of gold]. Others have included:

5. Big Ten on 48 x 48 Baseplates - even suitable for framing!

About six years ago, a close friend's grandson Justin and I began an annual Lego project for his county 4H Fair in western Indiana. For the second year of his restricted 12 x 12 x 12" projects he chose to do a 38 x 38 stud mosaic of the nearby Purdue University logo. He (with my assistance) won a blue ribbon, and I liked the logo so much that when he was finished with it, I transferred it to a 48 x 48 stud baseplate, where it remains today (see right).

The next year another local Lego enthusiast, Terry Parrish, saw the Purdue logo, and thought it would be fun to do Illinois' Chief Illiniwek, then under fire for being an native American Indian symbol. So we designed and he built the Chief on a 48 stud baseplate and had it framed:

Many pictures done on a 48-stud baseplate can be very reasonably priced, even though the baseplate contains 2304 Lego studs. Unfortunately Lego Group has (temporarily?) stopped making 48 x 48-stud baseplates, though about 1500 light gray and light bluish gray plates are on sale on BrickLink for typically $10-15 with or without original packaging.

The second issue is cost of the Lego itself. I uses bricks 99% of the time for my mosaics, though plates work just as well. You can purchase the 2304 studs worth of Lego bricks in standard colors for no more than a penny per stud on BrickLink and not a lot more from Lego Group (especially if you're buying many larger bricks/plates to cover large areas of uniform colors). Even orange bricks (only made since about 1998) can be purchased for about 2 cents per stud, with plates costing perhaps 3 cents (though 1x1 plates are 15-20 cents each). BUT if you (or I) want to do a large mosaic using a lot of dark blue bricks or plates the cost jumps to 5-10 cents per stud, and for purple [say Northwestern University Wildcats] ~500 purple brick studs would cost $50-75 and plates even more. You're now looking at an expensive project (heirloom?). The framing might not be the most expensive part of the project. Soon I'll be adding grids to the items below (and others upon request):

6. And several Logos that are a must for all AFOLs, especially in the midwestern USA.