Making Mosaics

Making Mosaics

Mosaic is the art of using broken china, plates, glass, seashells, and just about anything else to create a work of art and decorate your home.

By definition, mosaic "is a picture or decorative design made by setting small colored pieces, such as tile, in mortar."(from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.) In this millenium, mosaic is an art form using pieces of broken glass, china, seashells, etc. to create decorative items for your home. It is the latest craft taking the craft world by storm. Everyone is breaking plates and using them to decorate gift and home items.

To start creating your own mosaic, you will need to break some old plates/china, glass, or whatever you have around. You can also purchase some glass pieces, sea glass, seashells, buttons, and more at your local craft store. An adhesive is also needed. You can purchase tile adhesive or grout. Grout is available in many colors, too.

To begin, get a towel and put the china/plates or glass in the towel and break with a hammer. Continue until the pieces are small enough for your project. For example, if you were going to mosaic a picture frame you would need fairly small pieces.

When creating a mosaic, you can create a design or place the broken pieces randomly. For a picture frame you could use sveral different pieces or different colors and place them randomly along the frame.

To start, have your broken china, seashells, etc. in front of you. Using a tile adhesive, take a craft stick or other implement, place a small amount of adhesive onto the back of the piece. Attach it immediately to the frame as it does dry and harden. Continue this adhesive process until your frame is covered with the selected pieces of mosaic. Let the pieces set for a day until dry. Next, you may use the tile adhesive as the grout or you can use actual grout as that does come in different colors. Take a large amount of grout and spread it over the mosaic covering all the pieces. Be sure the grout fills in all the gaps. Again, let the grout dry according to the manufacturer's directions. After the grout is dry, take a damp cloth and wipe down the mosaic, cleaning up the pieces of china, etc., but being sure that the grout stays in the gaps. Let it dry and you have a homemade mosiac work of art!