I started this week on a mosaic for an outdoor shower that will find its home in San Gabriel, California. Here's a short video showing you a bit about the piece. This is my first video so bear with me. Hopefully I'll get better!
Video Transcript:
Hey everyone! My name is Dyanne Williams and I just want to show you a little bit about my current mosaic commission. So this is going to be an outdoor installation. It will be about 3 square feet, um, it's about 8-1/2 inches tall by almost 4 feet wide and it's going to be for an outdoor shower. It's going to be like this little band in the middle of the shower stall. The um, tile for the back is already installed and they're going to put a border that's cobalt around it. This is some of the tile for the pool and then this is on the stairs, so it has these pieces that come together with cobalt and kind of a speckled color. I'll show you a close up in a second.
So first I started by asking the homeowner what kind of artwork she likes, what kind of design she likes, what kind of color spectrum does she like? Well she said that she's been doing a lot of midcentury modern in her home and who doesn't love midcentury modern? And she wants to use some of the cobalt so I put a design together. Oh, and that she likes circular things and since I love circular things we came up with this. So we both agreed that the orange looked really nice against the blues and so this will be the strip in the middle.
Let me show you how it's coming along. So, this is what I have so far. Originally the design was to include four colors of blue. Well, unfortunately one of the blues was discontinued and it ended up just being really crowed and I wasn't seeing, you know, when you put the tiles next to each other it looked like a lot of contrast, but in practice it wasn't looking like as much so I cut out the second to darkest blue. I also did try, I have a lighter blue color than this that I could have used for the background and I did try but it didn't have the impact. Then when she sent me this glass sample, and as you can see, it has that same lighter blue as the lightest level of blue in there, so it turns out to be the perfect choice for this project.
So I finished all the oranges, I'm working on the cobalts right now and then I'll go out and finish everything else. So it's all looking good. I should probably be done in about a week or so. I'll show you the progress and then after I ship it out I'll have an installed picture.
I did mean to tell you a little bit about how it's done. Basically what I use is just a little Elmer's glue. Elmer's glue does not hold it, what it does is hold it in place while it is being shipped and installed. Then they will use thinset mortar to install it and that will hold it in place. With the exception, the only thing I didn't use Elmer's glue on are these little gems because they are translucent and I despise the mesh showing through the translucent glass. It drives me crazy. So what I do in this circumstance is foil back it. So then I use a clear adhesive that is waterproof and what I use usually is called Goop. And that's about it. I will keep you updated on the progress. Thank you and have a good day!