Good (Morning, Afternoon, Evening) Everyone.
I’ve been getting quite a bit done on my Mosaic project in the last few days. I love spending hours in my craft room and with the ‘stay home’ order in effect – I don’t even have to feel a bit guilty about it – talk about silver lining.
It’s time to start making the ’tiles’ for this mosaic. Remember, this is ‘faux’ mosaic so the tiles are actually paper.
I have a drawer full of decorative paper punches so I pulled out a few to work with.
I also went through my scrap bag where I keep all the small extra pieces of paper from previous projects.
I like the tear drop punch for tiles to go around the finger cutouts on the drawers. I have nine drawers so I’ll choose nine different papers.
I pick up some glue on a smaller size brush and cover the area where these little drops of paper are going to go.
You can kind of see where I’ve put it and how much.
By establishing the three points of this half circle it makes it much easier to fill in the rest of those little tiny paper drop shapes.
To move such a small piece around I found it easier to use the tip end of a wood skewer and just gently nudge them into place.
Once they’re where you want them to be then carefully brush on a thin layer of matte glue to seal the top and edges of each piece of paper tile. These little pieces are by far the hardest to work with but you get a feel for it after a few pieces and then it moves right along.
All nine drawers all have their little fussy accents now. Already this piece looks colorful and bright. But wait until all the rest of the tiles are on and then the glaze – it really wows.
Now it’s time to start filling in the front of the drawers. My biggest hangup is I tend to overthink the placement of the tiles. Don’t. Just try to let it free flow from here. You want to keep a space between all the edges of the tile, just like in a real mosaic, but that’s about all there is to it.
Once you have the piece cut to size, put down a layer of glue, set the tile and gently press it down into the glue making sure all the edges stay down as it dries. Once it’s dry enough not to move, then paint over it with glue making sure you seal the top and all the edges of each piece as you go.
The shapes, size, patterns, style, motif…it’s all up to you how you want your mosaic to look. I’ve made one other nine drawer chest like this one and I’ve also made one that was all blue willow patterns. I also did a very detailed piece that was based on a huge doll’s vanity from Pottery Barn.
It was not a project for the faint of heart or those into quick results. But I love how it turned out.
I’m moving right along on this project. Three drawers down – six to go! But look at all that color!
Yay! I’ve got all the drawers done. Now, you can choose not to do the sides, top and back of course, but it’s a ‘got to’ situation for me.
But first I want to ‘glaze’ the drawer tiles just so you can see the difference.
I just put a good size drop on each of the drop-shaped tiles on one drawer. See how I put it on the largest portion of the paper? Make sure it doesn’t go off the edge.
Using something thin and pointed, put the tip into the drop of glaze and gently pull the glaze to the edge of the paper shape (but not off the edge of it).
You can see there is quite a bulge of glaze humped up on each piece of paper tile. This will shrink a little when it dries, but not much. It’s supposed to stay raised like this so that it simulates real glazed tiles.
The drawer on the left is glazed (but not quite dry) and the right drawer hasn’t been glazed at all – I hope you see a big difference here. The glaze really brings out the colors in the papers…like they’re all wet making the color saturated. And then they have that great shiny gleam on them, as well.
Well, that’s it for Part 2. I was deep into my project and it was a moment before I realized I was hearing a weird chittering sound. Smokey was talking to the birds nesting outside my/her craft window.
I have three nesting houses around my home and pairs of English Sparrows use them year after year. These are the North’s (Mr. & Mrs.) that Smokey is keeping track of. The backyard sparrows are the Albert’s and the front yard sparrows are the Edward’s.
I’ve seen many a baby sparrow take its fledgling flight from these boxes. Mother Nature is so amazing.
Thanks for dropping in for a look, I hope you come back for the finale (Part 3). – Kriss
Old Raven Creates 