The mosaic tree-Stage 3

A smashing time!

I have been collecting bit of broken plates and pottery and broken it up in a plastic bag into managable sized pieces. You really need to smash it in a bag as otherwise the bits fly all over the place in your general eye direction!
Don’t do that!

I have drawn a rough design on the ball.

Now the sticking begins.

I bought a tile adhesive that is designed for bathrooms and is waterproof.
I’ve got some tile nippers that I can cut up the pieces of pottery into the general shapes I want, but they are not great quality, so the shapes are a bit rough. I don’t mind as I’m a bit too impatient to bother with fiddly little pieces anyway.

Slowly but surely I have stuck on leaf shapes, a butterfly and dark green stems, and it’s starting to come together.
It’s really theraputic, like doing a jigsaw puzzle.
The plates and pottery that I have used are all different thicknesses, so the surface of the mosaic will be uneven. You can see in the picture below how the flower petals stick up.
I like that, and I’ll regard that as a deliberate feature!

Lastly the best bit.
Grouting the mosaic ball.
I used a waterproof grey grout which pulls the design together.
Now it looks like a real mosaic!

I still have the other ball to do, and after that I’ll show you the next stage of attaching the balls to the iron bars to make them into topiaries.
(When I’ve figured out how to do it)

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