A Back Splash of color

WARNING, I'm not done.  But I can't wait to post and I can always throw up another post with the finished results.

We finally got the Kitchen Back Splash tile up.

So you should know, a kitchen back splash, under cabinet lights, and nice sink/faucet were a requirement for me when buying a house.  See, I completely tore out and rebuilt my last kitchen.  When looking, I told my wife that I want a kitchen as nice or nicer then what I left.  I decided, to save money, I could do all three items myself.  Well, you move in, spend money, and things get pushed back....a year and half in this case. 
In our defense, a year back we found a mosaic tile we liked and proceeded to buy a sheet or two every pay day.  We missed some here and there, but we kept going until we had about 30 sheets saved up.  Then along the way, we got the pencil tile, grout, caulk, and seal.  So we managed to spread the cost over a year.  Not bad.

But HOW to do it?  For Ravenna owners, you totally understand the difficulty to figure out how to navigate the area around sink where the upper cabinet ends and the bar counter begins.  I found this image on pinterest a while back and it gave me some inspiration.

note: I did smaller tiles diagonally in the last kitchen....what a pain!

I liked how it wrapped around and down to the bar counter.  My wife wasn't sold on this one.  So I modified it a bit, added some pencil tile and think it worked great.

Our "Before" picture

my "at work" picture.

I had just finished putting up the pencil tile and took a pic

My solution for the area of concern.  Found a black pencil tile that we liked.  A few measured cuts on a tile saw and boom!  I used the pencil tile at the end of the counter as well.

So I still have to grout, caulk, and seal.  I will post some better, finished shots when done. 
All total, we spent about $325. 
Tile sheets were $5 each.  I believe we used 30 (12"x12"). 
4 sticks of pencil tile at $10 each.  I used 3. 
About $60 for seal, caulk, and grout. 
$35 for tile saw rental. 
$25 for the pre-mixed tile set
Bought a plastic v-notched trowel for $10-ish (can't remember as I bought months ago). 
I already had tape, painter's plastic. 

Next....under cabinet lights and sink/faucet. 
stay tuned kids