Rainbow Mosaic Egg Lamp

I saw similar lamps while on holiday abroad and went absolutely crazy for it. Unfortunately, I was unable to buy one and take it home with me, as the smallest one was over 30 cm tall and way too big for my luggage.

Took me a while to figure it out, but I finally managed to make one myself. Here's how you can make one too.

When unlit, this lamp acts as a nice, colorful decoration, you can choose to use few colors only, or go a full rainbow. The lamp looks amazing in a fully dark room. When you switch it on, the white grout goes fully opaque and ''turns'' black and that contrast between light, black and colorful mosaic allows the tiles to pop.

The project in itself is easy enough, but it takes a few days. Mainly it's drying time that takes a long time.

I'll go into detail later on, but here's the gist of what I used:

1. large, plastic, transparent egg container ( mine is the biggest I could find- 25cm tall)
2. colorful glass mosaic squares- around 500-600 pieces, like this one
3. super glue (several small packets), some duck tape
4. drill, wood screws, hole saw set
5. two small wood/plywood pieces
6. large, curved, surgical tweezers (useful for applying the tiles)
7. disposable gloves, small kitchen sponge, disposable spatula/ rigid piece of plastic
8. white grout - professional bathroom/kitchen grout from a DIY store or a small packet from hobby store, they come already mixed in a tub, or as a powder to be mixed with water
9. lamp components - if you are a complete amateur, consult a local shop- like this one, they usually provide tutorials with their products.
10. lamp base- hand made wooden base or store-bought, if you have a 3D printer, you can make a base like that too. IKEA sells lamp bases too if you can't be bothered making one.

Before we can get to the fun part of making this lamp, we have to go through the tedious ordeal of securing the base to the egg and making sure everything will be safe and secure and it won't topple over. I have a cat, so I pretty much have to bolt everything down or lose it.

If you are making the base yourself, you have to use a hole saw set to cut out a large, circular, wooden base (around 10-12 cm diameter) and a smaller, wooden ring (7-9 cm diameter).

While your hole saw is out, use it to cut out the base of the plastic egg. You want the hole to be only as big as the light bulb you are going to use ( around 5-6 cm). If you don't have a hole saw, use a box cutter, this plastic is fairly thin and malleable.

The bottom of the plastic egg is curved, even after a hole was made at the bottom. You have to flatten the bottom for easier and more secure fit. See before and after photos to see what I'm talking about.

We will use heat to flatten the bottom. Use an electric hob or a heat gun.

Find something in the kitchen that's heat-proof, has a flat bottom roughly the same diameter as the inner wooden ring. It can be a metal water bottle, thick glass or a tin/can. You will use this to press down onto the bottom of the egg to flatten it.

Remove the top of the plastic egg, we will only need the bottom part for this.

Place the wooden ring inside the bottom part and try to center it as much as possible.

Secure the ring to the egg with some duck tape.

Heat the electric hob to medium high and place a sheet of aluminium foil directly onto the burner. Very quickly, place the egg bottom onto the aluminium and immediately press down with a can or metal water bottle. Only press onto the wooden ring- that way plastic will flatten to confirm to that shape.

It will only take a few seconds, once you feel it's flat enough, take it off the heat and leave it on the cold portion of the stove to cool down.

When the bottom part is cool to touch, use a small wood drill bit to drill 3-4 holes through the wooden ring and all the way through the plastic. Then, use screws to secure the egg to the wooden ring and remove the duct tape.

Now that the inside ring is secure and doesn't move around, you can secure the base.

Place the wooden lamp base under the egg and try to center it with the wooden ring. Drill two small holes through the inside ring and all the way through to the bottom of the base.

Later on, you will place screws in the base and secure it to the egg.

Why do we bother with all this extra work?

The way it works is like this- the small wooden ring will be permanently attached to the base of the egg via screws and act as an anchor for the base. The base (wired with the lamp-holder) will be removable, so you can change the light bulb. To make it super secure, the base will be secured to the wooden ring by two removable screws.

You will need a lamp cable with a switch and plug already installed, as well as easy to wire lamp-holder (mine was so simple, I didn't even need tools, I just had to push the wires through small holes and it was done).

Drill a hole into the middle of the wooden base to secure the threaded rod - it will elevate the light bulb to the middle point of the egg.

Thread the cable through the base and follow manufacturer's instructions to fix the lamp holder.

Test everything and see if the lamp works.

Prepare your work station. This project will take several hours, if not days (drying time mainly) and you will need a secure space. At the very least, work on top of a rigid board that can be moved around.

Use waxed parchment paper to protect the surfaces (super glue and grout can be peeled off of it).

Select your glass mosaic pieces- whatever colors you want and mix them together. Spread the whole lot onto a flat surface and, one by one, flip each piece up.

Work in sections, apply a thin layer of superglue onto the egg and attach the colorful tiles to the surface.

Keep in mind that you can't place the tiles too close together. You need 2-4 mm space between the tiles, so the grout can be applied.

You will be working with superglue for a prolonged time, so keep the ventilation going in the room. Best to work outside or near a window. Wear gloves and, if possible, face mask.

The plastic egg comes in two parts, top and bottom. Always keep the top and the bottom part separate. Trust me, it's easier that way.

When gluing down the tiles, do each part (top and bottom) separately and DON'T glue the tiles down the middle. Leave an inch or so band around the egg that's free of glass tiles. When you are done, your egg should look like this.

Why?

Superglue doesn't bond the glass pieces and plastic permanently, this is a very short-term solution and you have to be both careful and work quickly in the next step. The true bonding agent is the grout.

But, in order to apply grout everywhere, you would have to manhandle the egg, move it around, flip it upside down and so and so on. If you were to do it like that, your glass pieces would simply start to pop off the plastic and you'd end up with a mess.

To prevent the mess mentioned in the step above, you have to apply grout in several careful steps.

You have to apply grout immediately after you are done super gluing the mosaic tiles to the egg pieces.

Apply grout to the top and bottom egg separately and DON'T join the egg pieces together.

Use a spatula to push large quantity of grout into the crevices. Don't be too rough, but press firmly, so the grout gets as deep as possible. Scrape the excess with a spatula.

You can use a wet sponge or a kitchen towel to wipe the egg off afterwards. We are only interested in grout getting as deep as possible to bind the tiles together.

Leave it to dry completely for at least 24 hours.

After 24-48 hours of drying, it's now safe to finish the egg.

Apply hot glue or some other plastic glue to the middle part of the egg- where the two parts meet. You want to apply some glue and combine the top and bottom parts permanently now. If any glue ends up leaking onto the outer surface- wipe it off.

Leave the glue to dry.

Run your hand over the un-grouted tiles in the middle of the egg- some tiles will definitely pop off.

You have to repeat the steps from before and glue more mosaic pieces to the middle part of the egg. Immediately afterwards you have to apply a layer of grout - only to the middle part, to bond the loose tiles. Wipe off excess grout.

And again- leave to dry for 24-48 hours.

The third grout application is purely for aesthetic reasons to even out the surface.

You can apply a layer of grout with your gloved hands or a scraper/spatula and then scrape off any excess.

Leave it to dry for a few hours (24-48 isn't necessary now) and come back to wipe it off with a sponge and some water.

Put the egg in a sink or a large bowl and use kitchen sponge and water to rub off the dry, excess grout off the egg. It might take a while, so keep rubbing until the surface of the egg is smooth. It took me about 30 minutes for the whole egg.

It's quite a work-out, but easy enough to do if grout hasn't had the time to cure fully.

Rinse the egg and leave it to dry naturally. If you notice any small pitting or any imperfections in the grout after the egg is dry, you can apply a small amount of grout those areas. In the picture you can see I had a few places that needed to be filled. I left it to dry and then scrubbed the excess off with a sponge.

At the end, if you have a polishing tip and a rotary tool, you can use it to buff the egg. If not, just rinse it, dry naturally and buff with microfiber cloth.

I forgot to mention, but for the duration of the grouting and any water polishing, I kept the inside of the egg dry with some duck tape.

So, now that it's time to assemble the lamp base, everything is dry and safe.

Lamp base is fitted with a light bulb and screwed to the egg.

And that's all done.

*Later on, I wondered if it'd be possible to change the color of the grout, I left mine white in the end, but I tested it anyway. If you have any acrylic paint, you can paint the whole egg with it and dry-wipe the paint off the glass tiles. After drying, you can go back and wet-wipe the lamp to remove leftover paint from the glass tiles.