Making Mosaics

I just finished the book displayed on the cover. This is a great book for all levels. It contains about 15 mosaics with directions on how to make them. There are also pictures of beautiful mosaics.

A great beginners' book. Comprehensive, useful and well organised information. Enabled my 8 year old son and I to complete our first project and achieve a pleasing result. I particularly like the detailed guidance on basic techniques such as cutting. The projects start of simple and straightforward enough for the novice to be able to derive a sense of achievement from, and then increase in complexity.I browsed several bookshops looking at books to help me get started, and have not regretted going with this one.

The colorful fish design on the cover of this book attracted me, but most of the projects don't particularly WOW me. The first few pages cover all the same basic introductory instructions that all other mosaic books do, though not extensively. The good quality of this book is that it begins with a very simple project which uses a pre-made decorative wall tile as the centerpiece. You simply frame it with small mosaic pieces. This is a great project for trying one's hand at mosaic to get a feel for the craft. The projects become progressively more difficult, yet remain fairly simple, so it's a great way to learn, even though the projects may not be all that appealing. The cover's fish design for a plaque is actually one of the more difficult pieces because of its more complex tile layout. A mid-difficulty project includes a couple of mosaic-covered boxes that I find attractive and would make with color modifications.There is a tabletop at the end of the book which I think would be prettier with a change of color choices, but I would never try it using the author's technique, which is to create the mosaic top, then put cement on the table and turn the table upside down and try to place it over the mosaic. The instructions say "try not to panic", but I'm afraid I would, worried that, unable to see the mosaic top, I might not get it centered, and end up with a huge mess. There has to be a better way to do that one.Often the instructions refer you to look at the list of suppliers for materials, but the problem is the list doesn't tell you which suppliers carry which materials. You'd have to call every single one (21 of them) to find out which of the suggested materials they carry. All in all, I would recommend this book for beginners. For others, keeping the book in your mosaic library can inspire some ideas, and I think the more ideas on hand, the better.

This is a good book for beginners (me). I did a bit of research on Martin Cheek, he has other books and they are all good choices. Unfortunately his classes are in the UK, a bit of a haul for US residents.

Surprisingly, the word `mosaic' has no literal translation. Some scholars have suggested that it means `crazy', which even if not absolutely accurate, seems to be entirely appropriate at times. Mosaic is certainly enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment. I have been running three-day mosaic courses for five years now and their popularity has grown as the public have slowly realised that they, too, can make beautiful mosaics for themselves. It never fails to amaze me that what appears at first glance to be such an inflexible material, can produce results that are so stylistically different and individual. The Italian master mosaicists had to train for many years before being allowed to tackle big public works. Understandably, they were (and still are) very secretive about their techniques. What they would think of a three-day mosaic course (or this book, which for some projects works on the principle that a weekend can be a `long weekend' - three days) is not worth repeating , but the fact remains that wonderful things can be, and are achieved in this short space of time. So let's let the mosaics speak for themselves. About The Projects In this Book. The projects in this book have been chosen to show the wide range of styles, materials and techniques available to the modern mosaicist. Choose the projects that suit your temperament - it is unlikely that someone who feels drawn to the `Gaudiesque' style of using great big chunks of broken pottery is also going to enjoy the painstaking work involved in nibbling fine detail for an intricate design. I strongly recommend that you read the chosen project through carefully before you start. There's nothing more maddening than to have to stop work because you have forgotten a vital piece of equipment. You will also notice that there are times when you will need to wait, say, for glue to dry. It is important to realise this before you begin a project, so that you don't get disappointed when you find you have to wait, for example, a whole week for cement to set. I have tried to choose projects that range from the simple, that can be achieved in a morning (For example the Trivet, page 00 and the Shell Number Plate, page 00) to the more advanced, that may take 3 days to complete (For example the Geometric Roman Paving Slab page 00). There are plenty of mosaics for internal and external settings. Mosaic has the added advantage of being able to be wiped clean, so you can hang it in your kitchen or bathroom if you wish. Other mosaics have been chosen simply because they make perfect gifts.