Month: March 2019

  • Changing Grout Color With Paint

    Changing Grout Color With Paint

    The following method is only recommended for dry indoor mosaics. Artist Megan Adams recently used it to save a mosaic that had been compromised by white grout, which makes tile colors look less intense and the mosaic as a whole “bleached out” in appearance. We put white grout in bathrooms because it is used as…

  • How To Use Iridescent Tile For Lights and Reflections

    How To Use Iridescent Tile For Lights and Reflections

    If we gave an award for best use of iridescent tile to create a sense of lighting in a scene, artist Terry Broderick’s mosaic “Pittsburgh Cityscape,” would have won it hands down. It is a must-see mosaic. Even if you aren’t planning on using iridescent tile for lights in a night scene, Terry’s mosaic is…

  • Chakra Tree of Life Mosaic, A Study in Design

    Chakra Tree of Life Mosaic, A Study in Design

    Artist Betty Ackerman recently used our fire-polished millefiori (the Mud-Turtle Mosaic brand) and stained glass to make a circular mosaic in the form of a rainbow-colored tree of life with a column of chakras spiraling inward on the trunk. Betty calls her mosaic “Chakra Tree of Life.” The first mosaics I ever made were found-object…

  • Glass-on-Glass Mosaic Table

    Glass-on-Glass Mosaic Table

    Artist Melanie Squires recently completed a stained-glass mosaic table, and I wanted to show it off for several reasons, and not just because it looks so good. There are some materials and methods to discuss, and there is the use of impressionism for the koi, which I thought was particularly effective. The Table Melanie made…

  • Cleaning Grout from Pits in Vitreous Glass Tile

    Cleaning Grout from Pits in Vitreous Glass Tile

    Vitreous glass tile has a lot fewer surface pits than it did a few decades ago, but it still has some, at least in most brands. Grout can sometimes lodge in these superficial pits if you don’t adequately sponge and haze the mosaic after grouting, and many novices find this problem particularly distressing. The good…