Stained Glass Mosaics

How to Make Stained Glass Mosaics

Guide To Making Stained Glass Mosaics.

Materials and Tools

Essential:
Glass Nippers
Clear adhesive (eg Weldbond)
Stained Glass or Stained glass tiles
Pattern for reproduction
Tweezers
Clear glass base (eg picture frame with removable glass)
Ruber gloves
non sanded tile grout
Sponge
Bowl of water
Safety Glasses

Steps:

1. Firstly you need to decide on the exact design you want to reproduce.
When first starting out it is advisable to choose a simple design, with simple shapes and a limited colour range. With stained glass mosaics it is often easy to over use colour, three or four colours are usually recommended. I personaly prefer abstract geometrical patterns, but you can choose anything: flowers, animals, patterns, whatever.

Designs can be taken from photographs or your own drawings. Before starting, produce a clear oultine of your design in black pen on a sheet of  paper, this can then be slid under the clear glass as a guide to work from.
Try laying out a few glass pices dry to decide on where each colour will go.

2. Choose the stained glass you are going to use. You can either buy precut stained glass mini tiles or produce your own from larger sheets of stained glass. To make you own glass pieces, wearing your safety glasses carefully nip off similar sized, random shaped pieces of glass. This nipping procedure is surprisingly easy as long as you have a good set of nippers, however be aware of small shards of glass. Once you think you have enough pieces of each colour you are ready to start.

3. The simples method for a begginer is to use the ‘direct mosaic’ method, you will basically be applying glue to each glasss piece and gluing them down.
For speed pour some of your welbond glue into a tub which you can dip an old paint brush into for applying the glue.

Continue to glue the pieces of each colour in the correct position, leaving a few millimetres gap between pieces. You may need to cut the last few pieces to size with you nippers. Remember it doesn’t have to be perfect

4. Once all the glass pieces are afixed, check there is not too much glue between the pieces and remove any excesss with a paintbrush.
If you are happy with your design and have checked all pieces are firmly pressed down then you need to leave the work over night to ensure the glue is fully dry.

5. The glue should have dried totally clear now and you are ready to apply your grout. For most stained glass mosaics a dark grey or black grout looks better than traditional white. For a beginner i would recommend a tub of premixed unsanded grout (the type you would use in a shower). This means you don’t need to start mixing grout and as it is unsanded it will not scratch the glass.

Now wearing rubber gloves, use a grout spatula to slowly press the grout onto the mosiac. This is the fun messy part! You need to press the grout into all of the gaps by flattening the spatula against the mosaic. Once you have done this, use a damp sponge to gently wipe off the excess grout, not pressing too hard.
As the grout dries you need to monitor it and periodically wipe the surface of the mosaic gradually cleaning the stained glass of grout. As the grout is about to fully set there should be no more than a ghosting of grout on the glass, this can be easily wiped off with a damp cloth later. Just dont let a lot of grout dry on the glass or it will be very hard to remove.

6. Once fully dry, give the glass a final clean and polish and then place the mosaic back into picture frame from which the glass came from.

7. You have finished your master piece!

More advanced stained glass mosaics can be done on circular glass discs which can then be framed using polished Zinc came as shown in the pictures below. To cut glass into circles you need a special glass circle cutter. To bend the Zinc came into a circle, you need a stained glass came bender. You also need a soldering iron and plumbers solder to fix the two ends of the zinc edging together.

Check out some examples of stained glass mosaic  here

For information on the stained glass mosaic