Mosaics are made when you arrange individual pieces of material, known as tesserae, to form a design. Tesserae can come in many forms such as ceramic tile, natural stone, china & porcelain, shells, buttons, etc.... The form you will be working with is glass.
You can apply a mosaic to mostly anything. You will be using wood as your base. To adhere the glass to the base, you will be using a clear silicone adhesive. You will use palette knives to spread the adhesive.
To cut the glass into the sizes you will want, you will use glass nippers, as shown below. When cutting, you MUST wear your eye protection.
You will be mixing grout to spread into the spaces between the glass tesserae. When mixing the grout, you MUST were your respirator. You will need a grout spreader or gloved hands for spreading. You will also need some rags to wipe the grout off of the glass.
Once you have all your materials, it is time to get started!
- To begin, you will need to sketch out your design onto the wooden base.
- Next, use your nippers to cut your glass into the sizes you need. Rinse the glass and place on paper towels to allow to dry.
- Once the glass is dry, spread adhesive onto the bottom side of a piece and place onto the base in its proper place. Continue this step until all of your mosaic has been filled in with glass tesserae.
- Now mix your grout and spread it with either your gloved hands or a grout spreader. Work in small areas at a time. Once the grout has been squished into all the nooks and crannies of the that area, wipe the glass with your rag to remove the excess grout. Then move onto a new area of the mosaic to fill in with grout.
Once finished, stand back and admire your work!
The glass mosaics below were done by artist Kasia Polkowska. Check out more of her work and learn about her process by visiting her blog at http://brooklynmosaics.blogspot.com/
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