Build a giant mosaic mural, part the second
By beccajoWell, you've read round one, are you ready for round two?
Breaking and Creating
This is the really, really fun part. Depending on your design and your materials, your milage may vary.
DON YOUR PROTECTIVE GEAR: Goggles and gloves, and an apron, are greally critical for this step.
An old box or clear container works just great for this. Take your hammer and SMASH! It somehow helps to have the other tiles underneath to help you smash the ones on top. Aim for a variety of sizes and shapes.
Use the tile nippers to cut off the edges of the plates, and cut out the centers. The raised ridges on the bottom of the plate (called the foot in pottery terms) is too thick for me to use. I'm saving them for a different project.
Put the different colors and patterns into large baggies-but be careful, the bags can break with all those sharp edges in there!
As you can see, one dinner plate yields one large paisley's border for me!
Anyway-the process is pretty simple, you lay down the adhesive with your trowel and your putty knife, and you press the pieces of pottery and tile down in the pattern that you want. You don't want the adhesive to bubble up between the pieces, you want about 1/4 of an inch of adhesive on the board and a gap of between 1/8th to 1/4 inch between pieces.
You can also directly apply adhesive to the back of pieces that are slightly curved, like the edges of bowls. Sometimes only the outside edges will be touching the adhesive, if that's the case, use your putty knife to 'butter' the backs of the tiles.
Grouting, the third part, is going to be difficult because of the irregularities, but it's gonna be worth it!
I'm using a combination of freehanding the coffee cups, and some cardstock stencils cut to my paisley shapes, to get the job done.
Be sure to leave some open spaces for installing-I'm leaving the edges open on each corner so I can screw them to the plywood wall when I get to the space, and also, be sure to save some of those tiles so you can go back later with the correct colors and patterns!
One other big tip, do the foreground and the background at the same time if you can! When I started, I was doing the coffee cups and paisleys first, then going back to fill in with the 'brick' colored tiles. But I've found it's MUCH easier to do them both at the same time.
Check my flickr account for more photos of the mosaic in action!
Easier to do, but harder to go back and fill in later!
Doing both at the same time-a lot easier!
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beccajo's blog (138 posts)
About Me: I'm obsessed with making the world a prettier place. I make my living as a production manager for a college's theater department, as well as the...
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