Behind the Design: Justina Blakeney X Granada Tile

It’s no secret how obsessed with tile I am. I’ve made tile the centerpiece of every major renovation I’ve done in the past five years. I’ve always dreamt of designing my own tile, and recently that dream became a reality when I connected with Granada Tile to create a custom tile design for my Casita. I designed about a dozen different styles until we landed on this design that both Jason and I loved. Designing tile is more difficult that it looks. I thought it would be quite simple, but limiting color palettes to 2-3 colors and keeping the shapes simple and not too thin or detailed is a challenge. At the end of the day, the impetus for this design came from a random place: a vintage trinket dish. I came across this dish on a work trip last year. I loved the illustrations of the birds, and they reminded me of home. Since we live near the river, we see birds like this soaring over our home frequently.

I thought it would look amazing if the backsplash in our Casita felt like a sky with the egrets flying across it. So I drew a version of the bird, inspired by the vintage dish, and photoshopped it onto Granada Tile’s hexagon cement tile. I was in love. There were some tweaks that had to be made for the construction: lines couldn’t be too thin, as the tile has a ‘template’ that gets filled with cement. We went through a few iterations of the design before we got it just right. Then I got to pick colors, so Granada sent over little tile samples so that we could pair colors together more easily.

After trying out many colors, we ultimately went with Midnight, Black and Latte. It was also a little tricky figuring out how to line up and angle the bird so it looked like it was actually flying through the sky. When, about three months after finishing the design the tile arrived, I almost cried it was so beautiful.

We ordered plain hex tile in midnight to mix in with the birds, and as it was being installed we were very specific and intentional about the placement of the birds. We wanted it to feel rhythmic, but not too predictable. We drew out all the tiles on the wall and drew the egrets in by hand to show where we wanted each one.

Once the tile went up, the whole look was very, very satisfying.

I also love that from the outside looking in, it creates this kind of surrealist moment where you peek inside the Casita to find birds soaring across the sky.

I’m really excited that the design was so well received by y’all after I shared it on Insta, Granada has decided to offer the tile for sale…and in case that is not exciting enough all by itself, you can even customize colors:

I can’t wait to see how this comes to life in people’s home around the world! Tile is life!

Shop the Justina X Granada Egrets at Granada Tile