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Blue Jay Mosaic
My most recent mosaic Blue Jay is 10 x 10 inches and made from our American-made stained glass on a mortar stone. This mosaic was made by improvising over a pattern.
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Small Mosaiced Objects: Decorative and Utilitarian
Artist Donna Stern has made some small mosaic sculptures that demonstrate the range of possibilities the medium has beyond murals and coverings for larger surfaces. Some of Donna’s recent mosaics are utilitarian (switch covers) while others are strictly decorative (mixed-media fish sculptures), but they are all small and very well done.
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Mounting and Grouting Mosaic Garden Sign
The backer used for this project was a reinforced mortar stone, and thinset mortar was used to mount the glass mosaic, which was on Mosaic Mounting Tape. This mosaic garden sign is displayed under the QR-code mosaic so that passersby know the purpose of the QR code.
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Miniature Mosaic: Mountain Valley Twilight
I continue to work on a series of miniature mosaics mounted on what I call my “mortar stones,” which are irregularly-shaped backers made by spreading thinset mortar on 3 or 4 layers of hardware cloth (steel mesh). My latest in the series is my mosaic Mountain Valley Twilight, which is 9 x 6 x 1/2…
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Mosaic Garden Sign
The Mosaic QR Code that I made for my garden needs some text with it because most people assume the sign is for some realtor or other commercial service. I decided to make a mosaic sign with the text “About This Garden” that could be displayed with the QR Code Mosaic.
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Contrasts: Value Versus Hue
Natalija Moss’s latest mosaic is a small work of 12 inches in width, but it demonstrates the power of contrast in value and of contrast in hue.
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Mosaic Obelisk Garden Sculpture
Lyn Richards has been making a series of mosaic obelisks for installation as garden sculptures, each with a completely different design. Like her Irises mosaic birdbath, Lyn’s garden obelisks are tightly executed.
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Vinegar Cleaning Grout Haze and Pit Stains
Glass mosaic tile, particularly vitreous glass tiles have sometimes have a few tiny pits in their surface, and these tiny pits can get stained with grout. Fortunately the pit staining can be prevented by applying a product called grout release before grouting, which is what installers use for large architectural tiling jobs. You can also…
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Sizing Your Mosaic
Once you have a design you would like to create in mosaic, the next step is to determine how large to make it. The minimum size a mosaic can be is determined by the finest detail to be depicted in the image. I recommend trying to render that one finest detail first to determine if…
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Van Gogh’s Cat Mixed-Media Mosaic Sculpture
Artist Peter Vogelaar has been at it again, and this time he has managed to surprise me. His recent mixed-media mosaic sculpture Van Gogh’s Cat has a plinth that steals the show in my opinion. The plinth on which the cat is standing is a mosaic-covered cylinder that seamlessly combines Van Gogh’s Starry Night and…
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Fundamentals of Mosaic Composition
I recently completed a mosaic titled Woodpecker Forest, which shows a pileated woodpecker on the side of a pine tree in a forest carpeted with capensis flowers. I think this composition is a good teaching example because it demonstrates several fundamentals of visual art. There is strong value contrast (light-dark) contrast in both the figure…
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Pileated Woodpecker Mosaic
My Pileated Woodpecker mosaic was made by improvising over a pattern. I created the pattern from a photo collage that I made in Photoshop.