smashing and sticking

A couple of weeks ago, me and wonderful mum went to a mosaic workshop with Lily Mosaics.  She's local to us in Nottingham, so if anyone in the area is interested, I'm happy to pass on her details, she's a great tutor and mosaicing is great fun.  I think I just made up the word mosaicing.  Spell checker doesn't like it anyway.

I completely failed to take any photos during the class, I was having too much fun choosing tiles, using tile nippers to cut them up and sticking them in place.  We had a choice of a mirror, a tray, a plaque or various MDF shapes we could cover.  I chose the tray and drew round two MDF birds for my pattern.  This is how far I got in class.

To be fair, Lis said I didn't have to leave and she'd help me finish it even though the class was over, but I was feeling very tired (and came down with a depressive episode that evening), and said I'd finish at home.  The depression grips me and I'm never able to do much craft work, it takes away my motivation, that's why blog posts have slowed down a lot over the last year or so and I haven't been doing as much sewing.  When I started to feel better, I got out the mosaic and finished it off.

The main background and bird tiles are ceramic tiles, their beaks are made from glass shards (the same kind of glass I used when I made my stained glass window).  The domes are... well they're domes!  The ones on the right are really shiny and pearlescent.  I also used some glazed ceramic shapes, buttons for the tails and some pieces of millefiori for the eyes.  The flowers next to the big bird's beak are also millefiori, it's just so beautiful.  Millefiori I mean, not my mosaic.

When all the nipping and gluing was done, I grouted it.  Waited overnight to clean the grout off the tiles, then grouted a second time for the places where the grout had sunk.  The day after I cleaned it off really well (whilst watching Special Forces: Hell Week - one of Mr C's programmes that I was made to sit through and became hooked on!), then polished it with a soft cloth.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  I've bought a tester pot of paint to paint the tray with, I will show you if I ever get round to it!  Mosaic will definitely feature more in my future, I just need to find things to mosaic - wonder how the buns would feel about mosaiced (another non-word) hutches?

To see and buy Lis's work or one of her excellent kits, you can visit her website here.  That's not an affiliate link.