With only two days left until my Children’s Museum Workshop, I’ve decided to make a change to the project I will be doing with the kids. I was planning to do Small Square Mosaics, which I did previously with my son’s Cub Scout Den. However, after my post yesterday I thought it might be better to do a project both artistic and functional. So I decided to switch from a simple square mosaic to a picture frame mosaic.

Shown above is my sample, which I made by moving the bricks from my original square mosaic sample to this base plate.

See below for more pictures and information on how I made the bases for these picture frames.

Shown above are the base plates I cut to create the picture frame templates. These are the same LEGO chess boards that I bought a bunch of recently on BrickLink and have been using to build the retro video game mosaics. They are a standard large (32×32 stud) base plate with square plates glued to them.

I used a utility knife to Cut LEGO Base Plates most of the way though the green parts (from the back side) and snapped off a strip from the bottom and an opening in the middle. The picture above shows a stack of prepared base plates along with the scrap pieces and the knife I used. These make very sturdy backing for the picture frames.

I even found a use for the middle scrap pieces. I made one more cut leaving a 3×3 plate square (12×12 studs), which makes a fine little tic-tac-toe board. During the building activity I will give each participant a small square to use as a test area. At the end, I will tell them to each pick out 5 square bricks of two different colors like the ones above so they can use it for tic-tac-toe.

The opening in the picture frame is just a bit smaller than 4×6 inches, which is perfect.  Plus, there is enough space around the picture for plenty of creativity.  I will post pictures of the kids picture frames after the workshop.