Tag: contemporary mosaic
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Mosaic Saints, Angels, and Icons
Historically, mosaic icons were made with traditional materials like smalti, marble, and gold leaf glass. Those traditional mosaic materials might be preferred if you are trying to make a reproduction that looks historically accurate, but they are more expensive and more difficult to work with. Do You Need Smalti? If you have any latitude in…
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Mosaic Letters and Numerals
You can make mosaic street numbers and signs using a grid, but mosaics made from irregular shapes of non-gridded tesserae are more interesting, especially if you use concentric andamento for the background surrounding the figures. Sara Sommers emailed us some pictures of her mosaic street number plaque, and it is made from cut pieces of…
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Beginner Mosaic Artwork
Mosaic is a great medium for beginners because it is accessible for people who don’t have much confidence in their ability to draw. Images can be rendered merely by arranging tile by trial and error until you like what you see. Of course it helps to have a simple outline or pattern of the image…
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Pet Memorial Name Plaques
For people wanting to make a portrait of their furry friend, I wrote an article on pet memorial mosaics using April Costigan’s work as illustrations of what is possible in terms of capturing likeness. The problem is that for many people, the task of rendering a realistic portrait of their pet is beyond their current…
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Figurative Mosaic Composition Integrated With Shower Tiling
Artist Jen Vollmer recently completed a shower mosaic which features fish and flowing water executed in the same colors as the surrounding mosaic tiling. Jen says that in retrospect, she wishes she would have used a darker grey grout and blue/green glass tiles instead of the light blue, which would have increased the contrast. I’m…
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Strong Color Contrast in Heazlewood Mosaics
Artist Megan Heazlewood makes strong use of contrasting colors in her iconic mosaics, and I think her work is inspiring for that reason. Egyptian Musicians Egyptian Musicians Contemporary Mosaic by Artist Megan Heazlewood There are several contrasting color pairs in Megan’s mosaic of ancient Egyptian musicians: the teal and pink of the lotus flowers, the blue and…
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Kitchen Backsplash Mosaics Using Original Designs
If you search Google Images for “kitchen backsplash mosaics,” you can see some good work, but you will also see way too many photos of beige and gray tile work that really doesn’t help too much in the way of inspiration, especially if you are wanting to make an original figurative mosaic or use colors…
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Re-Imagining Classic Geometric Mosaic Designs
One of the things I always notice in cities like New York or San Francisco are the older buildings that still have entrance ways and bathrooms with mosaics made from whole porcelain tile. These mosaics are very simple in design, sometimes merely a border around plain tile, or maybe a simple repeating geometric pattern. If…
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Mosaic Picture Frame
Angela made a mosaic picture frame using our irregular glazed ceramic tile and left the sides of the frame uncovered. She also nested the angular shapes to created an abstract pattern without cutting any of the tiles to make them fit. The unfinished side edges of Angela’s mosaic look particularly neat because the sides of the…
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Using Ceramic Figurines In Mosaic Art
Why break up ceramic figurines to use the pieces in mosaic artwork when you can use the whole figurine? Artist Laurie Gilson emailed me some photos of her recent work, and they are great examples of how you can use ceramic figurines in your mosaics and still use standard elements such as tile arranged in rows.
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Porch and Entranceway Mosaics
Ana Bonnin emailed us some pictures of her recent entranceway mosaic, and I wanted to share these with our readers. Ana’s pictures also made me remember that I needed to summarize what I know about best practices for making porch mosaics last longer. Ana’s mosaic is the family emblem that she and her husband designed to…
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How To Efficiently Make Mosaic Christmas Ornaments
Artist Phyllis Kempter emailed me some photos of the ornaments she made using our kits for 3-inch spherical mosaic Christmas ornaments and our 12mm recycled glass tile (plus a few other sizes of tile), and her ornaments caught my eye for two reasons: First, she used green in the patterns for her ornaments, which is good to do…