Patent ID: 8374424

Claim:
A method for producing multiple mosaics of an image, comprising the steps of: (a) providing elongated wooden sticks of square cross-section and of differing color characteristics; (b) arranging the sticks into groups according to color characteristics to thereby create a pallet of available wood colors; (c) digitizing an initial image of a subject and pixilating the image on a computer to a predetermined number of discrete colors actually found in the image; (d) creating a pre-pattern for the mosaic on the computer by assigning a color from the pallet of available wood colors to the discrete colors found in the initial image; (e) creating a final pattern by (i) assigning an exaggerated color to each of the colors assigned when creating the pre-pattern, and (ii) by providing a hard copy of the digitized image using the exaggerated colors, the hard copy of the digitized image being partitioned into columns and rows of cells, each cell being a predetermined number of pixels long and a predetermined number of pixels wide; (f) organizing the sticks by tagging the sticks of a particular group with the exaggerated color corresponding to the color of the group and placing each group in a separate bin; (g) providing a frame having a plurality of elongated slots, each of a transverse dimension substantially equal to the number of pixels long or wide of a cell of the pattern times the cross-sectional dimension of the individual sticks; (h) selecting sticks from the bins and inserting them into slots of the frame in accordance with the pattern and adhesively bonding the sticks in a given slot to one another to form a row or a column; (i) removing the adhesively bonded row or columns of step (h) from the frame and adhesively bonding the rows or columns together following the pattern; (j) slicing the assembly of step (i) transversely through the sticks into multiple layers; and (k) affixing the multiple layers of step (j) individually to stable substrates.