Important news for resellers and artists-wholesale minimum lowered to $250.00

Hi everyone,

If you are a reseller who wants to carry our products in your store, or an artist who wants to resell their art on our products, our minimum wholesale requirement has lowered to $250 per order from $350.00 per order. We are doing this temporarily–for the summer–in order to support the artist community.

Please contact us via email or phone if you would like more information.

Tel: 802 287 9098

Email: www.colorbakery.com/contact.php

Color Bakery’s new framed mini-murals

We absolutely love these new framed ceramic tile mini-murals that come in lovely wooden frames. If you want a tile mural but don’t want the expense, or don’t want something that’s all that big, these precious mini-murals are perfect to dress up your bare walls. The frames are about 11″ x 11″ and come with four hand-adhered ceramic tiles which we custom make for you. The frames are available in two colors, black and natural. If you want to see more, click here to go to the Mini Mural shopping page. Click the image below for large size.

Save money….fabulous prices on brand new sample sale items!

We’ve just added a slew of brand new, fresh-out-of-the-box sample sale items. Sample sale items are items used for art fairs and trade shows that are on brief display. In this case, they were never taken out of their boxes. We have table placemats, glass tiles, ceramic tiles, wine caddy and much more. Save big dollars on brand new merchandise. Everything is custom made and handmade. Some photos below. To visit our Sample Sale, click here.

Custom decorative tile: what tile finish should I choose?

Customers frequently ask what kind of tiles they should use for their new custom art backsplash, tile wall mural, tile border or floor.

First, let’s talk about standard custom imaged tile sizing: the standard sizes available for custom-imaged tile are: 4.25″ square, 4.00″ square (tumbled stone only), 6″ square, 8″ square, and 12″ square. 6″ x 6″ tile is the most frequently used size for tile murals. One might consider using larger tile sizes for bigger spaces. I personally don’t recommend 4.25″ tile for mural work, unless you space demands it and you are not covering a large area–it will look way too busy. So your mural must mathematically be in increments of these numbers.

Invariably, the first thing I will ask my customer is where in the home the tile is going to be installed, because that will impact my answer to a certain degree. If the mural is going to be splashed with hot cooking grease and be installed in a busy area that tends to get dirty (like a backsplash behind a stove), my recommendation would be glass–and that’s because the cleanup is by far the easiest. Would other tiles work behind a stove? Positively. But they won’t be as maintenance-free as glass.

For full disclosure purposes, I must confess to having a preference when it comes to tile, especially tile with my own art on it. My first choice is glass. Why? A few reasons, the most compelling one being aesthetic. You can’t touch glass when it comes to beauty and jaw-dropping impact. Ceramic and tumbled stone are beautiful, but glass—glass sings on a stage all its own. Glass receives color magnificently, so it is the perfect choice for artwork that is rich with color. In addition, unlike other types of tiles we custom print, the image is printed on the back–not the front–of the glass. That means you are looking through the glass to see the image, and the effect is reminiscent of gazing through a very still pool of water down to the art below. Glass also cleans up very easily–a regular glass cleaner will work just fine, and the image won’t be impacted at all, since it will never touch your hands or your cleaning fluid. Another powerful reason: glass does not require grout. No muss, no fuss, and no dingy grout to scrub in the future.

Glass Tile

While we’re on the subject of glass tiles, Color Bakery has a special art technique which mimics the full effect of stained glass. When we print it on glass, it’s very much like the real thing but without the expense and limitations of stained glass. In fact, this art can also be printed on ceramic tile and it will still have a stunning, stained-glass feel. (See images below, click on image for large size).

Stained Glass Artwork on Glass Tile

Stained Glass Artwork on Ceramic Tile

Now, while we’re on the subject of grout, that is personal taste. Ceramic does not require grout, and neither does glass–but tumbled stone does. We’ll talk about that in a bit. “But won’t the glass break?” an interior decorator once asked my frustrated husband, who had spent an hour and a half on the phone with her as she kept asking the same questions over and over. “Not unless you have a habit of standing there and swinging a sixteen pound sledgehammer at it,” he said, and we heard giggling in the background from the client herself. This glass is pretty tough; I’ve accidentally dropped these tiles many times (yes, I am a bit of a klutz) and they almost never scratched, chipped or broke. Was I lucky? Sure. But this glass is 1/4″ thick with beveled edges and you have to work pretty hard at smashing them up.

If there is a downside to glass, it tends to have a sleek, modernish look. For those who really want an old-world, vintage, antique flavor glass is probably not going to be their best choice. Tumbled stone (tumbled marble, tumbled porcelain) will be more appropriate.

Tumbled stone tends to be slightly off-white, and the colors will be slightly impacted by that–they will be less saturated. This will result in an antiqued, slightly muted finish that is wonderful for old style classic paintings by the masters, vintage art or photography, retro patterns, etc. What is important to remember about tumbled stone is that it is real stone, and stone is imperfect. It has cracks, jagged edges, crevices, chipped corners. If you’re into perfection, you should not opt for tumbled stone. If you love a vintage, antiqued, earthen look, you will adore it, and you will find those flaws add to, not detract from, the beauty of the tile. If you want “The Last Supper“ or Van Gogh’s “Olive Grove” on tumbled stone, you will be thrilled with the aged, classic effect.

A less expensive alternative to both glass and stone is ceramic tile. Ceramic comes in three different finishes: matte, satin and high gloss. I heartily recommend satin because matte is a bit dull and looks a bit unfinished; high gloss can blind you with glare and, if you look at it the wrong way, it’ll scratch. And boy, you’ll notice it. Satin is the best choice, not too glossy but has a nice, satiny subtle finish that enriches the art without overpowering it. Aesthetically, ceramic is clean and modern looking, but not overly so. It has a bright white surface so the colors will reproduce beautifully.

Now that we’ve covered tile choices, let’s talk about artwork. If you are choosing a pattern for a backsplash or a tile border, it makes sense to try to match your color scheme and overall decor by choosing an art piece (or having us design custom art just for you) that matches. But if you are choosing a piece of art, I would urge you to choose a piece you love and not worry one whit about matching your decor. If you choose art based on the color scheme and not the quality of the artwork or how it makes you feel when you look at it, I feel you are doing yourself and your personal space a great disservice. Art is art; it doesn’t always have to match your walls or your wallpaper. So what if the sky has aqua in it and you don’t have any aqua in your living room? Art is not always another element of your color and design scheme, it can be a deeply personal expression and when you treat it as such, the end result surpasses all expectations. Drapes and carpet need to match and complement each other; not a piece of art, which is what some tile murals may be. is. The bottom line? Only you can decide whether the tile piece you are buying is part of your decor or is meant to be a piece of art. Whatever the case may be, Color Bakery will work with you to either select an image or create a new one that brings your vision to life on tile.

Color Bakery also makes custom tile floors. Floors require a special floor tile that is scratch resistant and can receive weight safely. Floor tiles come  in tempered/textured glass, ceramic and porcelain. They are available in 8 x 8 and 12 x 12 tiles. With floors, you can be very creative–you can either have a mural (one image divided) or you can use a pattern. Or, you can alternate one pattern or coordinating patterns throughout solid colored tiles. In other words, you can use them as the full floor or merely accent tiles. Below is a custom tile mural floor we created for a customer who requested a custom Zodiac wheel:

A tile mural or backsplash can totally transform a room, it can become its most beautiful focal point. It will give you great pleasure for many years to come. Color Bakery’s calling card is transformative tile projects of the most customized kind. Please contact us if you’d like to learn more.

Custom ceramic tile kitchen art design, Country French hen and coordinating patterns

What Color Bakery does best–and what is indeed our calling card and pretty much an anomaly in the tile industry– is to work closely with our clients, taking on an interior designer and artist role. We love working with our clients, making suggestions, offering guidance, and then putting together a game plan that is not only one of a kind, but totally transforms a room or space–keeping the customer’s tastes in mind. First we talk to the client about their wish list, then we try to get pictures of the space in question. Then we discuss artwork and color–usually the customer will want a piece or pieces designed from scratch, but sometimes they want an existing piece of artwork manipulated to suit their taste and color scheme. This project had a little bit of both–art manipulation and custom, from-scratch design.

Sandi, a new client, delivered a kitchen tile design challenge to us recently; she had some tile space in her brand new kitchen that she wanted to cover over. I believe the painted tile designs came with her new house and she didn’t like the artwork but she didn’t want to rip out tile, either.  She told me that she felt that the kitchen needed some strong accent color. I couldn’t agree with her more–the kitchen badly needed some color, it was basically all white. She wasn’t really sure how she wanted to approach a backsplash and some accent tiles, so she came to us for ideas, custom artwork and custom tiles. (Addendum: the client just emailed me, and this is what she wrote, verbatim:)

Hey Mindy, I had meant to write to you sooner, but life got away from me. We just moved into the new house and things are EVERYWHERE! I got the tiles and mural this week and they are BEAUTIFUL!!!! I am really excited to have them installed as they are going to make this kitchen pop. I will send you pictures of the before and after once it is all done. We have a few weeks to wait as I am having some of the cabinet doors remade. I don’t want to start the work until we can finish it, so it may be closer to the end of July or August at the rate this unpacking is going

Thanks again for your workmanship- this is truly one of a kind and I love it! I’m so glad I found you online.
Sandi

When we first started talking about her kitchen, asked me if she could cover the old tiles with new ones, and I told her yes, she could. Many of our clients have done so successfully. Our ceramic deco tiles are thin enough not to jut out too much, and in fact, if installed properly it can give a stunning three dimensional look that is even more dramatic than flat tiling. She was concerned that the tiles had finished edges (I assured her they did), and then when she realized the possibilities, she couldn’t contain her excitement. Below, see a photo of the three spaces she wanted to cover and transform with custom tile (click on image for full size):

After some discussion, Sandi and I decided to do an 18″ x 18″ ceramic tile mural using 6″ x 6″ tiles for the backsplash, ensuring the mural would not need any cutting/trimming. Banking both sides of the mural would be two strips of 4.25″ ceramic tiles going down in rows of four, flanking the mural. The flanking strips would be complementary patterns that worked with the main mural. Two of the tiles *might* require some trimming to fit beneath the cabinets, but they would not be part of the mural, just individual tiles.

As to the art, Sandi fell in love with a very old, vintage French poster from 1910 that we offer on Vintage Mural. The size was wrong and the colors were wrong. Sandi wanted bold cobalt blues, reds, yellows. She had a square space, but the image was rectangular. That was a problem. Cropping it would look bad, the eggs would be chopped in half. On top of that, the image was extremely old and damaged, so we really had our work cut out for us. (See image below)

Below, you will see the vintage French poster totally transformed, and redone to fit into a square space. It was also extensively retouched and recolored. Flanking the sides of the mural are custom designed accent tiles to coordinate with the main image: (click image for bigger size)

Finally, here are the two strips of custom accent tiles we designed from scratch for her other two horizontal spaces to cover the floral tiles (see below, click image for full size):

And that is how Color Bakery transformed a kitchen space. When the tiles go up, we will post photos here! If you have any questions or would like your own custom transformative tile project for your home, contact us.

Purples, oranges, yellows cavorting in the grasslands

Brand new art from Color Bakery is comprised of two complementary “diptych” images that can easily be coordinated for custom printing on any of our products. Rich, bold colors in warm earth tones–orange, yellow, deep peach–are the canvas for bold cool purples that have a strong element of blue hues.

The images are named “Grassland” and “Grassland II” respectively. If you would like to inquire about custom printing for tiles, wall murals, floor tile or any other tile or gift item, contact us.