DIY: Mosaic Art

Asha Mohan

May 8, 20202 min read

Our earliest DIY project and my favourite till date has to be the 'Mosaic/Tile Art'. This is the way we spent our first anniversary, by attending a mosaic workshop in London and making a simple nameplate with our initials.

For this DIY you would need:

2 square tiles

Multi coloured glass tiles (20mm x 20mm)

Tile nipper for stone, marble, porcelain, and a ceramic tile

PVA Glue

Pre-mix mosaic Tile grout (Black or colour of your choice),

Brush

Cloth to wipe

For protection:

Safety glasses

Gloves

Be mindful

When you nip the tiles it could splatter around.

So this isn't really suitable for children or an adult supervision is certainly required

Ensure that the workspace is covered with paper to catch the debris

Lets start with it:

Step 1: Decide the kind of mosaic art to be done (like coasters, name plate, pot) and the medium that will be in (Plastic, mosaic, wood). The one here shown is a Mosaic tile. I would suggest you to go with a simpler option to start with.

Step 2: Draw the desired design(ours was Sunburst) on the base object and finalise the size of mosaic tiles that are appropriate for the level of detail in the design. We had gone for 20mm x 20mm sized glass mosaic tiles. Similar ones available in Amazon

Step 3: Start segregating the required colour tiles and nipping the small mosaic tiles in varied shapes. Please be mindful while nipping the tiles, the plastic tiles can be a bit hard to nip, and they can fly around during the process

Step 4: Apply glue on the each tile and start gluing away to the base object as per the design. Using a PVA glue may be good, as it is forgiving and allows you to shape the design as you go.

Step 5: Once all the tiles are glued, and dried, its time to grout. Just open the pre-mixed grout and start applying on the whole medium generously, its important for the grout to fill in all the gaps between the tiles. Use an applicator or a plastic card to smooth the grout out evenly across the whole design. I would recommend a pre-mixed black grout to be used as it would accentuate the colours, also saves you from the mess of mixing it yourself.

Step 6: Once you are happy with the grout filling, just let it dry for a day. Once dried, get a clean cloth and a paint thinner to remove the excess grout. This requires a bit of effort to carefully remove all the dried grout sticking on top of the colourful tiles, while you do not pull the grout out of the gaps.

Step 7: Once the tiles are clean to your satisfaction, just buff it up with another clean cloth, and they will turn out nice and shiny.