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Glass gem and toy glass marbles are not certified by their manufacturers as mosaic tile or building material, yet it is possible to see some older mixed-media mosaic in houses and churches, particularly in Mexico, where marbles and objects of recycled glass have been used. These materials seem to endure quite well, certainly much better than most types of ceramic tile, which can be highly susceptible to freeze-cracking.

Glass Gems

Glass gem marbles have a variety of names: glass globs, flat marbles, craft marbles, accent marbles, mosaic marbles or glass gems. All of these terms refer to a glass gem that is flat on the back side for gluing to surfaces. The shape of the gem is like an enlarged bead of water.

Glass gem marbles are great for mosaic mirrors, picture frames, backsplashes and mosaic stepping stones, but they also work well as accents in mosaic images. You can also use these gems successfully in mosaic art other than “found-object” collage pieces. For example, this goldfish mosaic makes use of tumbled cobalt gems for the background. The rest of the mosaic was made with iridescent glass.

While the centers of the gems are slightly thicker than glass mosaic tile, the edges curve downward, allowing the gems to provide a 3-D texture to the surface without sticking out too far or too abruptly.

Toy Glass Marbles

Toy Glass Marbles of the traditional spherical type can also be used in mixed-media mosaic. However, the rounded bottoms mean that marbles make it more difficult to glue them to flat surfaces alongside tile which is much thinner. Thus, toy marbles are best used by pressing into concrete in stepping stone molds or pressing into a special type of sticky concrete known as thinset bonding mortar.

Toy marbles can be glued to a flat surface, but it is best to use a thick and tarry adhesive like Liquid Nails brand construction adhesive or use thinset. Both materials are good at holding the rounded bottoms of the spherical marbles, but thinset has an additional advantage: Thinset is concrete and can be applied extra thickly under thin tile to make up for the differences in height when thin tile is used alongside more rounded materials like glass marbles and gemstones.

Safety and Maintenance

Most types of glass, including glass gems and marbles, can produce extremely sharp edges when chipped or flaked, but so can many sorts of glazed ceramic tile, and all such damaged edges should be removed or smoothed with the fine side of a Ceramic and Marble File to prevent injury.

As always, you would file broken tile when wet, misting as needed, and collect the dust in wet bag for disposal. Keeping the dust wet is an easy was to make sure it stays out of the air, and you shouldn’t risk breathing construction dusts of any type, especially glass dust.

Choosing the right adhesive for your mosaic

Picking the correct adhesive or glue is a very important decision when starting a mosaic, possibly the most important. If you choose the wrong one, your mosaic will not last as long as it should.

The best way to make a decision is to understand the different choices of adhesives and which ones works better with certain surfaces and tesserae. The primary deciding factor will be where the mosaic will live once it is complete: indoors or outdoors.

Indoor mosaic glue

Weldbond is the best. It’s a water based PVA glue, has no fumes, dries clear and water resistant, bonds to most any surface, is non-toxic and cleans up easily. We’ve extensively tested it, which you can read about here. However, I prefer to use thinset bonding mortar for floors. It gives a more stable and durable walking surface and better resists water seepage when cleaning the floors.

Outdoor mosaic glue

In choosing adhesive for outdoor mosaics, it’s probably best to avoid adhesives altogether and use thinset mortar (a sticky concrete with added polymers) instead. To use thinset, you should read and follow the instructions on the package for mixing, handling and disposal. We also have a guide to using thinset. In brief, thinset is like grout and other concrete products. This means that the best place to mix them up is outside, and you should wear a dust mask if have trouble mixing it up without creating a lot of dust. (Our artists merely stand upwind and mist it with a spray bottle until they get it mixed up.)

I usually mix up about 1 or 2 pounds at a time and smear it on the wall with a small trowel or putty knife. I spread it out to about 1/8″ to 1/4″ thick and press my mixed materials directly into the concrete. I wear rubber examination gloves and keep a damp rag so I can wipe away any excess that squeezes up to the face of the tiles. If you keep the concrete in the bucket covered so that it doesn’t dry out, then it should stay workable for several hours. I made the mosaic columns at the gallery using thinset mortar in this way. I always keep a small bucket with a little water and rag to clean my hands from time to time and a dry rag in my lap.

See our illustrated grouting tutorial for more details.

At this time, we no longer recommend using a construction adhesives in an outdoor environment. Use adhesives other than thinset at your own risk.

Read more about outdoor mosaic considerations.

Glue for marbles and round stones

Marbles and round stones can be a challenge. Unless they are being pressed into cement face-up on a horizontal surface like stepping stones, the right adhesive choice is important. You may be able to use a thick cosntruction adhesive for this purpose, though it isn’t recommended to do this for outdoor mosaics. It is probably best to use thinset in these cases.

Understanding Different Types of Mosaic Adhesives

PVA glues like Welbond are water soluble adhesives that will clean up with water. PVA glues should not be used on any outdoor project. Even if it isn’t exposed to rain, humidity can also loosen the bond. When working in the indirect method, PVA glue can be used to adhere tiles to fiberglass mesh. It also bonds well with any type of tile and wooden or acrylic surfaces. Again, Weldbond is the best and it dries clear.

Thinset is a sticky cement which can be messy to work with, but it is necessary for outdoor projects if you want them to hold up. It can be found at any hardware store, and is often only sold in large quantities. The best surfaces for thinset are porous, such as cement, cement backerboard, and wood and terracotta. To use with non-porous surfaces like glass, the thinset has to be mixed with admixes instead of water, which are either latex or acrylic liquids that make the thinset sticky. Premixed thinset is not as good as dry mix.

Silicone is used most often on glass surfaces because it comes in transparent varieties. It usually comes in a caulking tube and can take some time to get used to. It is difficult to remove and if you apply too much, it will come up between the tiles and make grouting more difficult and incomplete. When used under larger sheets, the areas towards the inside may never cure completely.

Epoxy is used on metal surfaces, but works on wood and glass also. It can hold up outdoors in ideal conditions, but it is very difficult to use and has a noxious odor. Once it is mixed, it must be used quickly. But when it is used successfully and correctly, it is a very strong adhesive and it dries clear.

In speaking with other mosaic artists, you will likely find that everyone has their own preferences for adhesives and that they are used in different ways from artist to artist. Understanding the characteristics of each type of adhesive will help you in finding the best solution for you in your various projects. When working with a new glue, be sure it is what you need for your project. Is it for interior or exterior, is it toxic, and will it work with your surface? Other than Welbond, the most popular brands for mosaics are Liquid Nails, MacGlue, and Gorilla Glue. Once you’ve experimented with several types of adhesives, you will get a feel for what you prefer and what works best.

Always clean up excess glue before you grout. After water soluble glue has dried for a day or two, I come back and mist the mosaic with water. After about 10 minutes, any traces of glue that are sticking up on the sides of the tile will start to turn white. I then take a razor knife like a box cutter or exacto knife and trim away the excess glue. This cleaning step ensures that there will be no glue sticking up and not covered by grout.

Ideas for small mosaic projects for beginners with examples

Mosaic Trivets and Mosaic Plaques

The best beginner’s project is a small trivet or plaque made on 1/2 inch plywood. I recommend cabinet-grade plywood which comes with a sanded finish. Many times you can get plenty of plywood in the scrap bin from a home remodeling job. Note that your backer doesn’t need to be perfectly square. Irregular triangles and rectangles and trapezoids work as well as squares. Remember to be “artistic” and “color outside the lines.”

If you desire to make a mosaic shape like a star or a cat or a sun, then 1/2 inch sanded plywood is still the best way to go. You can buy an entire sheet of plywood and a jigsaw to cut it with for not much more than what most craft websites charge for mosaic backers. Another advantage of cutting your own shape is that your project is more likely to look like YOUR art instead of some factory-made craft kit, which is all I can think of when I see the mosaic shapes or mosaic backers sold elsewhere.

The exposed edges of your plywood backer can be painted with a neutral color of acrylic paint or even latex house paint. You don’t always have to buy something special to make art, and you can often use what you happen to have on hand. In fact, using re-purposed materials usually adds an extra dimension of creativity to your project.

Displaying small mosaic plaques is simple: they can rest on a table as a coaster or trivet to hold hot plates, or they can be displayed on a small plate easel, such as people use to display fine china plates.

Mosaic Christmas ornament by Jim Hopton constructed on a 2.5″ Styrofoam ball using glass mosaic tile and antique china shards found along the shores of the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh, PA. I recommend threading a wire loop all the way through the Styrofoam ball before mosaicing to make sure that the heavy mosaic ornament has something secure to tie the string to. Craft stores sell little hoops with spikes that stick into the Styrofoam less than an inch, but that would not hold a heavier ornament. Our mosaic ornament kit comes built ready to hold the weight of tile and grout.

Mosaic Mirror by Melanie Berry makes use of broken dinnerware and broken talavera tile from Mexico, which is a soft terracotta tile with a colorful glaze of primary colors in traditional patterns. Keep in mind that you can make your own mosaic mirrors from plywood and mirror stock. One sheet of 1/2-inch plywood is used as a backer, and a second of 1/4 inch has a whole cut out for the mirror and forms a frame around the mirror. If this seems like extra work compared to buying something ready made, then remember that making your own allows you to make it exactly the size and shape you want. Tip: you don’t have to own a jigsaw or cut it out yourself. You probably have a friend or a friend’s partner that can do that for you.

Butterfly Mosaic Vase by Sandra Schwartz was made on a thick glass vase. Sandra reports that she coated the vase with Weldbond and allowed that to dry before gluing on tile. This makes the work of gluing on tile much easier because a surface of dried glue is less likely to allow tile to slide compared to a slick glass surface. I would recommend scuffing the glass with coarse-grit sandpaper before applying the first coat of glue.

Mosaic Mirror by Sandra Schwartz is a mixed-media mosaic that uses glass gems, glass mosaic tile and broken dinnerware.

A guide to finding and using repurposed and recycled mosaic materials in a responsible way.

Materials That Age Gracefully

Technically, you can make a mosaic from anything just as you can make art from anything, but if you say “mosaic” to mean a piece of durable artwork made from hard weather-resistant materials, then you have to resist the temptation to include things like plastic toy parts or wooden figurines or metal bottlecaps. Or keep the artwork indoors, which is fine. The point is that all the grout in the world will not make those materials more resistant to rust or humidity or degradation by the sun’s ultraviolet rays. In fact, concrete is mildly caustic and actually causes those materials to oxidize more rapidly when exposed to moisture.

All that being said, I love to use found and improvised materials in my own mosaics, and I have used wood and plastic and thin pieces of painted metal. BUT I used them in indoor mosaics. I did not tell myself any art-school babble about how natural and beautiful it would be to watch my art decompose and decay, etc., mainly because I have seen older found-object mosaics where the plastics and tins have eroded out, and they didn’t look interesting. They looked sad. Plastic does not age gracefully, especially when seen alongside glass and stone that look the same as they day they were installed.

There is also the environmental cost of making certain forms of art. If I want to make Tibetan butter sculptures, I will use butter. Then I can watch my artwork melt in the sun and listen to the Buddhist monks talk about the impermanence of life, etc. But if I use materials like grout and glass tile (materials which take a lot of fossil fuels to manufacture), then I will make sure that the artwork hangs around long enough to attempt to justify the environmental cost.

Recycled Materials

Recycled and repurposed materials commonly used for making mosaics:

• old china plates
• tea cups
• seashells
• beads
• ceramic pieces and figurines
• household tiles, used and stripped from walls or floors
• scrap glass
• broken mirror
• teeth, bone
• buttons
• marbles
• pebbles and beach stones
• typewriter keys
• jewelry
• small metal tools
• coins
• bottle caps
• nuts and bolts
• dice
• chandelier pieces
• old watches
• metal, glass and ceramic souvenirs

Keep in mind that many found objects such as bones and seashells are porous. This means that they can be stained by grout and that they can be damaged by freezing temperatures if water is allowed to soak into them. The solution to both issues is to seal the objects thoroughly with a tile and grout sealer. However you don’t want to get the sealer any place glue or grout needs to stick. We glue the objects down, then we take a small artists paint brush and coat the tops of the found objects with sealer, taking care to not let excess sealer run down the sides of the object where the grout needs to bond. After the mosaic has been grouted, we come back a few days later and seal the entire mosaic, grout and all.

Sourcing Materials

Here are a few places to check for recycled mosaic materials:

• Tile stores, flooring outlets and home improvement centers: ask the managers for broken and discontinued tiles.
• Look around the dumpsters at home improvement centers or tile shops for damaged discards.
• Neighborhood construction dumpsters and home renovations.
• Search your garage and those of your friends and family.
• Thrift stores.
• Garage sales.
• Craigslist-check the free listings.
• Freecycle.
• Discarded stained glass pieces from glass artists.

How Mosaic Artwork Is Displayed

The mosaics featured on this page are inspiring examples of mosaic artwork that was integrated into architectural spaces and interior design. We also offer some ideas and guidance about displaying your own mosaic artwork.

In the mosaic patio above by Victor Kobayashi, individual mosaic stepping stones were arranged in a “quiltwork” of different designs. This modular use of stepping stones to create a rearrangeble floor is a great concept, and not just in the finished product.

The stepping stones are made one at a time, allowing the artist to spread the work over time where it can be enjoyed. By avoiding a large construction project with workers, equipment, dust and disruption, the artist is able to sit in their own patio and literally build the space around them in their own time.

The crazy-quilt design also allows the artist to pursue different design ideas instead of being exhausted by a one large design where creativity and enthusiasm are potentially gone before the work is done.

Note that the mosaic stepping stones above were made by using thinset bonding mortar to attach tiles to pre-made concrete stepping stones. Stepping stones are also made by pressing tiles into wet cement in stepping stone molds.

In addition to stepping stones, contemporary mosaic art is typically encountered in a funtional form such as flooring or a mosaic backsplash or mosaic tabletop or as a frame for picture or mirror. However, it is possible to make a small mosaic picture or abstract design and display it simply as an object of art

Small Mosaic Pictures

Small mosaic pictures can be easily displayed in several ways.

A popular method is to make a small framed base by glueing 1/4″ or 3/8″ plywood into a small wooden picture frame.

Still more popular is the small desktop easel, such as typically used to display china plates.

Pieces of flat flagstones are often used as the base for these desktop mosaics displayed in easels. The flagstone works particularly well for creating authentic-looking reproductions of fragments of Roman Mosaic, and the unfinished edges and irregular shapes seem to look good with contemporary designs too.

Sanded pieces of plywood (birch or maple or oak) are good bases for desktop mosaics because they minimize weight and the risk of scratching of surfaces. However, it is best to glue a piece of felt to the bottom of any mosaic, even the plywood-based mosaics, if you intend to display them horizontally on a desk or table as a paperweight or trivet. We sell maple and birch mosaic backer boards in different sizes which can be used in this fashion.

Displaying mosaics upright in an easel gives better visibility. The price and quality of the easels available varies significantly, ranging from cheap transparent plastic ones designed to be as small and unobtrusive as possible to to very fine wood and metal easels that lift the artwork a few inches off the surface.

Larger wrought-iron display easels are available for floor-level use on patios. Note: it is important to anchor larger mosaic plaques in the back to prevent a toddler from pulling it over, and select a location where it isn’t a hazard for foot traffic.

All varieties of display easels can be easily found and purchased online. Email us if you have suppliers you wish to recommended suppliers or tales about certain products.

Some Advice Concerning Wooden Mosaic Tables

Wooden tables should only be used indoors. Humidity warps wood over time making tiles pop off. Plywood is sometimes used as a mosaic backer inserted into a metal base. In this case, the life of the mosaic can be extended by sealing the mosaic with tile and grout sealer and painting the edges and bottom surface with outdoor paint.

Most used coffee tables are made from thin laminates and aren’t real wood. They can be difficult to sand down (for the mosaic adhesive to stick),and they are usually loose in their joints due to use. However, some old used coffee tables are solid wood and can be used. Also, some tables have a rim where it is possible to insert a thin piece of plywood to serve as the actual base of the mosaic.

The best sources of solid wooden tables for mosaic are unfinished furniture stores and websites.

The MAS studio has used hardwood molding from the building material store to make borders around mosaics installed on wooden tables.

Some Safety Advice Concerning Metal Mosaic Tables

• Never make tables unstable by overloading the tabletop.
• Small bistro tables can fall over with dangerous force.
• Place small/tall tables in corners to minimize the risk of overturning them.
• Not all old metal patio tables make a good base.
• Have a local welder inspect and reinforce tables if you have any doubts.
• Old wrought iron patio tables of a certain age are usually heavy enough to function as a base.
• More recent iron and aluminum patio tables often don’t appear to be heavy enough or sturdy enough.
• Never overload tabletops with mosaic.
• The center should be supported as well as the edges.
• Plywood tabletops left outdoors will eventually warp and disintegrate due to humidity.
• Plywood tabletops can be made to last much longer by sealing the mosaic painting the edges and bottom surface with outdoor paint.
• Concrete backer board needs to be fully supported by the base.
• The MAS studio has used 1/4 inch concrete backer board glued to 3/8 inch plywood as a tabletop base.
• Ideally, the rim of the metal table should extend above the height of your mosaic.
• Consider having a local welder friend fabricate what you need. Or fabricate a new table.
• Remember, most old tables aren’t worthy of the work you will put into the mosaic.

Some Safety Advice Concerning Hanging Mosaics on Walls

• Mosaics can be quite heavy and you should never create a safety problem by suspending a large mosaic by a small nail or picture hanger as you might do for a painting of the same size.
• Larger mosaics including larger mirror/picture frames that have been covered in mosaic should be securely anchored to the wall.
• Make sure that your nails or screws go through the structural frame or backer of the mosaic and into the studs inside the wall and not just drywall. Use multiple screws or nails.
• Do not overload walls. Consult a local carpenter if you have any doubts.
• Keep in mind that mosaic was used historically as an architectural element, meaning it was built into floors and walls. If you want something portable, you need to keep the size relatively small.