How to Make a Halloween Ghost Mosaic Lamp

Set up and sort your materials

Rest the globe in a folded cloth ring so it cannot roll away from you — this is the single most useful thing you will do all afternoon. Then sort your materials into separate dishes: cream tiles in one, pink and orange beads in another, and the handful of black rectangles somewhere you will not lose them.

Work with the globe's opening facing up. You will be decorating the outside curve, turning the globe as you go.

Dry-arrange the ghost

Before any glue, lay the cream tiles onto the front of the globe in the shape you want: a wide rounded dome for the head and shoulders, straight sides, and three or four rounded scallops along the bottom for the wavy hem of the sheet.

Keep it blocky. Resist the urge to make a smooth outline — the stepped, pixel-like edge you get from square tiles is what makes these ghosts read so well from across a room. Stand back a few paces and check the silhouette before you commit.

Glue the ghost's body

Now lift the tiles and start gluing for real, working from the top of the dome downward. Press each cream tile onto the curve with a small, even gap to its neighbours.

On a sphere the tiles will not sit perfectly flat, and they are not meant to. Let each one find its own slight angle against the glass — that faceted, hand-set look is the whole charm of a curved mosaic.

Add the face

Three pieces of black glass and the thing comes alive. Two small upright rectangles for the eyes, set wide apart and high on the dome, and one wider rectangle centred below them for the open mouth.

Spacing is everything here. Eyes set too close together make the ghost look cross; set them generously apart and drop the mouth well below them, and you get that blank, startled expression you are after.

Start the background

Time for the colour. Spread a thin layer of adhesive over a small patch of bare glass beside the ghost and pour your pink, mauve and orange seed beads onto it, pressing them down so they sit shoulder to shoulder.

Work in small patches and turn the globe as you go. If you glue too large an area at once it will skin over before the beads reach it, and you will end up with a thin, patchy stretch you have to go back and fix.

Cover the whole globe

Keep working outward until the beads meet all the way round and run right up to the top and bottom rims. Slow down when you reach the ghost: push the beads hard against the edges of the cream tiles, into the scallops of the hem and up under the chin.

Tight beadwork around the outline is what keeps the silhouette crisp once there is a bulb behind it. Any bare glass you leave will glare as a bright blank patch when the lamp goes on, so hold it up to the window and top up the thin spots before you stop.

Grout it

Here is the payoff step. Mix your white grout to a thick paste and press it into every gap with a gloved finger, working it in circles so it fills right down between the beads. Cover a section at a time.

Then wipe back. Take a barely damp cloth or sponge and lift the excess off the surface of the glass, leaving grout only in the gaps. Go gently and rinse often. As you wipe, clean white lines appear between every tile and the whole piece suddenly stops looking like loose beads and starts looking like stained glass.

Let it haze over, then polish the glass clear with a dry cloth.

Cure it, then light it up

Leave the globe to cure fully — overnight is safest — so nothing shifts when you move it. Then seat it on your base, fit a low-heat LED bulb, turn the room lights off and switch it on.

The pink ground glows rose, the orange flickers warm through it, and the ghost sits in the middle of it all looking mildly astonished. That is the moment it stops being a craft project.