Tag: grout
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Case Study: Non-Sanded Grout for Mosaics with Incidental Gap
For better glass mosaic images, tiny incidental gaps are the way to go. Just forget about grouting and fit the glass as tightly as possible. Or better yet, cut the pieces less precisely and use the slight errors in shapes to form an incidental grout gap. I highly recommend this latter mode of working because…
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Nonstandard Method for Removing Mortar in Gaps
Natalija reminded me that she used her cordless drill with a mesh disc to remove the hardened mortar, and that cordless rechargeable tools exist. Either we didn’t have cordless rechargeable tools on my home planet, or I was having a stress-induced boomer episode yesterday. One of those two things is true, maybe both.
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White Grout: The Floral Print Aesthetic
Artist Masha Leder‘s mixed pique-assiette architectural mosaics using white grout are so good I wanted to name this blog article “In Praise of White Grout.” I have been hoping more people would email me some photos of their white-grout mosaic artwork ever since I started posting about avoiding white grout in mosaic images, meaning figurative…
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Imperfection as Grout Gap
The Blue Crab mosaic I recently completed is a good example of how to create a grout gap by making use of imperfect cuts instead of spacing the tiles intentionally. The “imperfect cut” method makes the process of creating a mosaic faster, easier, and less tedious -first in the cutting and placing of tiles but…
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Choosing Grout Color Using Tile Test Swatches
Tracy Kaplan recently emailed us a picture of her FIRST mosaic, and it is nice solid work, impressive even, especially considering that her instructor gave her some problematic advice concerning the grout color. Tracy’s teacher had recommended a chocolate or nutmeg colored grout, but Tracy wisely considered how a dark brown might cause adjacent tree…
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Staining Grout With Acrylic Paint
Mosaicists sometimes mix in artist acrylic paint to create custom colors from white grout, but you can also use acrylic paint to “stain” grout after it has hardened (for dry indoor mosaics). Like the process of staining wood, “staining” grout with paint is a process of wiping on and wiping off. The paint sticks to…
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Consistent Grout Gaps
In my recent blog article about black and white grout, I wrote the following tip for minimizing the width of grout gaps and working a little faster at the same time: If tiles only touch at points but not along the length of their sides, then tiles can be positioned very closely and yet still…
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Black Grout vs White Grout
Black grouts bring out the intensity of tile colors while white grouts overwhelm them. Natalie Knox’s Day of the Dead Skull mosaic is a good example of how well black grouts work and how a light colored backer isn’t a good indicator of the mosaic would look with white grout. Don’t Be Fooled If you…
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Grouting Case Study (Plus Mosaic Art Worth Seeing)
Artist Sherri Grasmuck created a mosaic facade of Guatemalan women on her house in Philadelphia that is the perfect case study for choosing a grout color.
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Matching Grout to a Room’s Color Scheme?
Choosing a grout color is more of a situation where you want to avoid making a mistake that causes the tile to look wrong than it is an opportunity to tie in the room’s color scheme by selecting some optimal color. A Case Study Should you match grout color to a room’s color scheme? Not necessarily. Making…
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Black and White Photorealistic Mosaic Art
Black and White Telescope Mosaic. Mark’s grandson gazes at the stars. Stylized or Photorealistic? Mosaic is usually used to make stylized images, meaning images that are simplified in certain ways, and that is done because the constraints of working with tile that only comes in certain colors and can only be cut so small forces the artist…
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Shrinking Grout: Fixing Holes In Groutlines
Grout does not shrink, but it is prone to forming voids and bubbles if it is not rubbed thoroughly into the grout gaps. These holes are easily repaired. My friend Fredrik reported a problem while grouting his mosaic portraits of famous rock icons. He described the grout as having shrank in the grout gap. Shrinking Grout Detail…