Typical industrial-gray mouse pads aren't very attractive. Luckily, it is easy and fun to enhance them with colorful images. Anything flat and thin will work: photographs, color copies, clippings from magazines or newspapers. Besides your artwork and a mouse pad, you will need a piece of fabric to serve as the background for your images, some Stitch Witchery (a sheet-based fabric adhesive), a sheet of peel-and-stick clear laminating plastic, a glue stick, a bone folder, and an iron.

Begin by cutting out a piece of Stitch Witchery, slightly bigger than your mouse pad. Place it on the pad, lay the fabric over both, and carefully iron the fabric down, which will activate the Stitch Witchery's adhesive and secure the pad to the fabric. With sharp scissors, trim the fabric, neatly cutting as close to the edge of the pad as you can. Now you can start gluing pictures. They need to be as smooth as possible; your mouse will stumble over any bumps. Also take care to leave a certain amount of the fabric exposed, especially around the edges, so that the protective laminate will have something to stick to.

Finish your customized pad by delicately laying a sheet of peel-and-stick laminate across it, smoothing the laminate out with the bone folder to remove any air bubbles. Once you've trimmed the excess laminate, you can introduce your mouse to its new playground.

Resources
Stitch Witchery is available at local fabric and sewing-supply stores; peel-and-stick laminate is available at local stationery and office-supply stores.