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While awaiting for some mosaic supplies to arrive I am working on the design of the mosaic art for the mailbox. Nice and pleasing mosaic art blends art glass shapes. This design has very appealing combination of mosaic glass cut squares in the background, rectangles for the border and custom cut glass shapes to form the design that is unique, eye pleasing and easy to identify the focal elements of the mosaic art. We are going to custom cut stained glass art to achieve a similar effect of the custom mosaic.

Update: 3-14-2008 Turquise ocean waters is a first theme for the mosaic design. We are based in the Florida Keys and all those incredible photos of Bahamas you see in your travel brochures apply perfectly to our corner of the paradise here. This mosaic design captures the enchanting beauty of our oceans. Florida Keys has two distinctly beautifull oceans: the Atlantic and the Gulf. The striking colors of aqua greens, contrasted by white coral sands and dark green sea grass, spiked by vivid colors of abundant tropical fish sea life. This first mosaic mailbox design will capture our tropical beauty, serene beaches and the caribbean atmosphere in the Keys. We will blend the art of nature into the custom mosaic design to create a unique mailbox for you.

March 18, 2007 Update: Each custom mailbox will be unique as they are hand made from individual pieces of hand cut mosaic, art glass, mosaic ceramic elements, sea glass and other treasures found in the Florida Keys beaches.

March 21, 2008 Update: The initial mosaic mailbox will be offered without additional personalizing but ultimately we plan to offer incorporating an option to design your house number into the mosaic mailbox design. These will be custom made after order is placed so the delivery time will be about 2 weeks for production as we will make the mosaic mailbox especially for you and your house number will become part of the mailbox design.

Update 3/26/2008: The main focal tropical fish for the mosaic mailbox will be custom cut from stained glass ordered to complement our tropical color scheme design. Here are some concept design pictures for your enjoyment.

Update: 4-16-2008 The final batch of the stained glass supplies arrived and we will be posting some photos of the actual design elements from the design studio… so stay tuned.

Update 4-21-2008 We have just completed the design and you can check out the layout of the tiles in the photo right here.

The design consists of Moorish Idol tropical fish casually swimming over the reef in turquise ocean blues of tropical waters. We have mixed several media ( stained art glass, ceramic tiles and sea glass) to achive a more dimmensional look and feel.

This is work in progress layout on the white paper so it is not dimmensional or a final design yet and of course this is not glued and grouted… but it will give you an idea of the design direction on this custom tropical mailbox.

Update 5-6-2008 Here are some pictures of the mailbox with all tiles attached. The tiles are not grouted yet… so this is good work in progress photo set.

Update: 6-10-2008 Here are pictures of the finished mailbox we took about month ago. These were sold locally and we have pending orders for more. Since each mailbox we make is little different as all the elements are hand made and hand cut, I will post more pictures of additional mailboxes based on this first design later. Meantime, here are pictures of finished mailbox.

CLICK ON THE THUMBNAILS TO SEE A LARGE VIEW

Side view	Back view	Other Side view	Front view

This custom mailbox is a standard capacity 8.75″ H x 6.75″ W x 19″ D steel mailbox, painted white, U.S. Postmaster General approved. The mailbox is then customized with stained glass hand cut mosaic tile, sea glass and ceramic pieces.

Most of the supplies for the mosaic mailbox were sourced from Etsy. Etsy is this wonderful place where you can find all things handmade. We found cute things like:

• Sandy Seashells
• Tropical Glass Gems
• Beach Glas
• Handmade Tropical Fish Ceramic Tiles

As the theme of the first Mosaic Mailbox design is our ocean and beach we also went to the local sea shell store in Key West and bought some small assortments of shells suitable for the mailbox design. Local beaches provided additional goodies, such as sea glass, small shells and other bits and pieces you can find during sunrise or sunset walks on any of our wonderfull beaches here.

The staple of mosaic mailbox supplies is art stained glass. This was sourced from stained glass wholesale source. Here is a pallete of our glass pieces on order: Tropical waters blue green pallette and Florida Keys sunset pallette.

Update 4-16-2006 Finally our shipment of supplies arrived. We will complete the first mailbox within a week and post detailed photo in the first section of the mosaic mailbox page.

This section will be expanded with the detailed list of tools and suppliers so if you wanted to get your supplies and tools for your own stained glass mosaic mailbo from the same vendor, stay tuned.

Update 5-6-2008 Here is a list of most important supplies. We only bought the best we could find to assure the mailbox will last through exposure to sun, humidity, rain and sleet and be as frost resistant as possible.

To transfer our mosaic from the flat paper where we have designed the piece onto the actual mailbox, we have used clear adhesive paper from Cleartec.

Since the mailbox mosaic is for outdoor use we have chosen Polyurethane Premium Liquid Nails to glue the mosaic pieces to the mailbox. The Acrylic Emanel reducer is used to clean off the extra glue wherever necessary.

For grouting we use the white sanded grout and go the extra mile to weatherproof the grout mix using TEC Acrylic Grout Aditive, which makes the grout weatherproof. It is an extra cost but well worthed for any outdoor mosaic project.

We also used the best grout sealer we could find to assure this mailbox will stand up to any weather conditions.

Update 5-2-2008 our first set of mailboxes sold locally. We are located in Florida Keys, so a custom mailbox with a tropical design is quite popular here. At the moment we are in process of making additional mailboxes of our design and will post them here when they become available for sale.

Update 6-10-2008 We have just posted pictures of the finished stained glass mosaic mailbox with tropical fish design. This particular design sells for $250 and more are being made as we post this. If you wanted to book one for you, bearing in mind we have about 3 weeks backlog, you can do so by calling our customer service at 1-800-761-XMAS number and we will make one for you as well. The shipping on this mailbox is $18.75