make a mosaic

I finish my first mosaic – a 9×12 inch trivet made from handcut (by me) stained glass tiles.

I have learned a lot during the process…and still have much more to learn.

• Buy smaller tiles – I hand cut each tile into 9 smaller pieces. My hands are a mess.
• Figure out how to keep fragile pieces from shattering. Some colors just seemed much more fragile than others. The orange highlights in the mermaid’s hair are all jagged. Everytime I tried to cut them, it would break into bits.
• Buy more bandaids – Ouch
• Deal with tiles of differnt heights – Some of the tiles were thicker and now the surface isn’t as smooth as I would like.
• Use more glue – It is really frustrating for pieces to move even a little when you have sepnt so much time placing every piece so carefully.
• Have a plan – I just started with little more than a general idea that I wanted to do a mermaid.
• Start with something easier – I started with the Mermaid’s face and I was still learning how to cut the tile and play with spacing. I wish I had started with something easier. You can see that I had to add on a little chin after the fact.
• Slowdown – I am quite obsessive when I get started on a project. I really need to learn to enjoy the process.
• Have more tiles – I had only the colors that were in the couple variety packs that I bought (they were the only colors that the craft store had).

I went to the store yesterday and purchased some basic mosaic supplies. I am going to make a trivit so that I can play around with some of the methods… now all I have to do is come up with a design. hmmm