When we last left our intrepid ceramicist she was considering breaking the project into manageable bits.

Last month (Feb 2006) I took a class (3 evenings – and given my schedule they weren’t even 3 consecutive Thursdays as the instructor has suggested) at Laurel Street Arts in San Carlos, CA. It’s the rainy season, so I didn’t want to work outside.

Everyone in the group made a tray (rather than a terra cotta pot which was also offered). I made mine fairly random in design, as I was trying to practice working with the materials. Other people made much more organized designs. However, working with too much detail is difficult in this low resolution medium. Photos to follow.

• cut tiles and break plates by first scoring with the wheeled tool, illustrated at http://www.kptiles.com/whglni.html (I have the non-wheeled type of scorer, but may invest in the wheeled, as I found it a bit better.)
  Breaking
• wrap the item in a towel when breaking to avoid lots of small sharp crumbs from spreading all over the yard, house or workarea
• trim pieces after making the big cuts, using the nippers

• make the spacing small-ish, like .25 inch maximum
• try to keep even height, which is tricky for me because I’m using dishes that have a lip
• keep the glue off the surface if possible, although you can remove it later, during the wiping or polishing of grout phases

• combine color into the grout before adding water (I used paint for this one, but I think I could use tumeric for the yellow for the big project!)
• mix grout in a ziplock bag and if it’s got color mix enough for the whole project because matching a hand-mixed color is impossible
• if the grout is too wet, let it sit for more than 15 minutes before wiping. This is an area which I was remiss in on earlier attempts to make mosaic objects
• wipe the excess grout with single strokes, and don’t wipe too much while it’s still wet
• polish when fully dry

Note: the tools are available from Home Depot, Lowe’s, OSH or equivalent, as well as by mail order from various places on the web. No endorsement implied of the vendor mentioned above; they just had easily accessible illustrations. (Of course that’s also not a non-endorsement.)

To be able to use this tray, I now need to paint the bare wood (optional) and then when the paint is dry, coat the whole thing with another product to make both the grout and the wood waterproof. Since I’ll use the tray outside, and making the grout wet regularly would not be good for the longer term health of the tray, I’ll coat it.