“Tiles, tiles, tiles - where do I begin? ...creating your own one-of-a-kind handmade tiles makes for better mosaics.”
I love to teach, but even more than that, I love to learn. I have long admired the beautiful mosaic pieces created by the incredibly talented Laurie Mika and have wanted to take an in-person class from her. Unfortunately I live a fair distance from where she teaches, so I decide to treat myself to her book, Mixed-Media Mosaics: Techniques and Projects Using Polymer Clay Tiles, Beads & Other Embellishments.
Upon receiving and reading this well-written guide from cover-to-beautiful-cover, I unearthed my bin of polymer clay and started making tiles. I absolutely enjoyed every minute of this creative process. I kept making and baking until I had quite a sizable container of tiles ranging from about a quarter-of-an-inch to an inch-and-a-half in size. I had so many tiles in fact that my finished piece is 11” x 14”.
I was so inspired by Laurie’s jewel tone colors that I repeated them on my piece. What a different change of pace for me, the ‘Queen of Rust’…
Taking another tip from Laurie, I added a printed image from a book to one of the tiles and ‘framed’ the picture with a piece of a belt buckle from my junk stash. Laurie also recommends using words in your mosaics, so you will see in the photo above I stamped the word ‘seek’ into the clay of one of the tiles.
The photo does not do this justice because of the reflection, but I just had to add an eye encased in glass.
If you are like me and have acquired loads of art supplies like polymer clay, beads, buttons, paint, glitter, stamps and embellishments, then add this terrific book to your studio. I highly recommend this imaginative resource for creating in mosaics!
