How To Mosaic Blog

Tag: glass beads

  • Making Mosaic Letters from Beads

    Making Mosaic Letters from Beads

    Glass Seed Beads in the 3.7mm size can be strung on short pieces of wire to make letters, numerals, and symbols in mosaic artwork.

    Step #1. Find Wire

    Any variety of metal wire can be used, but copper taken from stranded electrical wire is the easiest to find and use:

  • Mosaic Interpretation of Picasso Painting

    Mosaic Interpretation of Picasso Painting

    Brian Kyle’s mosaic interpretation of Picasso’s painting “Man With Ice Cream Cone” is a refreshing departure from the cute themes that seem to dominate contemporary mosaic artwork. Brian calls his mosaic “The Lecher” and says that some people are creeped out by it. I say that makes it real Art (with a capital A) in the sense of being worth thinking and talking about.

    Mosaic Interpretation of Picasso’s “Man With Ice-Cream Cone” by Brian Kyle. Notice how the working lines of the black background all converge on the ice cream to make it a focal point.

    Improving Picasso?

    Brian’s mosaic is also noteworthy because it has some interesting elements that actually build on what Picasso was doing, which is no small trick. (Successfully improving or extending a master’s work is a fairly significant accomplishment any day of the week.) Notice how the working lines of the black background all converge on the ice cream to make it a focal point. I think Picasso would have approved and possibly even been jealous of how Brian used the lines of the background to focus even more attention on the cartoonish black tongue licking the white ice cream.

    Glass Beads For Texture and Depth

    Another thing that makes Brian’s mosaic worth looking at is that the artist successfully used glass beads with ordinary flat glass tile to give the surface texture and depth.

    Glass Beads in “The Lecher” Mosaic give the surface a texture that begs to be touched.

    Work In Progress

    Brian also sent us a good photograph of the mosaic in progress, which shows the classic direct method of drawing the pattern on the backer and mosaicing directly on that surface.

    Work In Progress photo of “The Lecher” Mosaic shows the pattern drawn directly on the backer.

     

  • Glass Beads for Mosaic Art

    Glass Beads for Mosaic Art

    We now sell glass beads for use in mosaic artwork. We have several types including murano, lampwork, millefiori, etc., but for practical purposes, glass bead are best divided into two groups: those small enough to be glued next to glass mosaic tile without sticking out too far, and those so large that they are best used by pressing into a bed of thinset mortar. In either method, glass beads are a great way to give a mosaic texture and dimension and an eclectic look and feel.

    Small Beads For Gluing On Surfaces

    Some of our Glass Bead Assortments are beads small enough to be glued beside thin mosaic tile and not stick out too far. The assortments are made from beads in the same color family as shown.

    Larger Lampwork Beads For Pressing Into Mortar

    We also sell assortments of larger Lampwork Glass Beads. These are best used in stepping stone molds or pressing into thinset mortar.

    Stepping Stone Molds are used to make mosaic stepping stones by pressing tile, stone, glass gems and other durable objects into wet concrete. Our large lampwork glass beads are perfect for decorative art were pieces are pressed into mortar or concrete. As always, you have to be careful with stepping stones and make sure you don’t create a slip hazard or position glass pieces in such a way that they can get broken off and leave sharp edges exposed.

    Ideas For Using Glass Beads

    It’s easy to come up with ideas for how to use glass beads in found-object mosaics: just combine them with other items made from glass, porcelain, stone, thicker seashells, and other durable materials. But beads can also be used in figurative mosaic images. Consider the following:

    Mosaic tile can be arranged in curved rows to suggest motion, such as when tiles in the background are laid out in concentric rows around the figures in the foreground. The mosaic bird image in our logo is an example of how this works:

    The bird in the Mosaic Art Supply logo uses background tiles arranged in concentric rows to suggest motion.

    Rows of glass beads could be alternated with rows of flat glass mosaic tile to increase the contrast and make each row stand out more and heighten the effect of the concentric rows, especially if the rows of glass beads were placed more randomly and intermittently instead of every other row.

    Similarly, you could use single-file lines of beads to outline figures, render letters and numbers, or draw smaller figures.

    Millefiori and Murano Glass Beads

    We have Glass Bead Assortments of various types of murano, millefiori, and lampwork.

    Most of our more elaborate varieties of glass beads are larger than what could be easily glued on a flat surface next to glass tile –but not all of them! The millefiori glass beads are the exception. They are relatively thin and could be used to suggest smaller flowers in a mosaic bouquet.