Thursday, June 10, 2010

TRY A NEW CRAFT: Glass Mosaics at FIA Art School!

Posted by Crystal

For the next 8 weeks, I am taking a class at the FIA Art School on Glass Mosaics.  Our first class on June 8 was amazing!

I took various scraps of turquoise, green and white glass (shown around the edges in the picture above) and used the tools to cut small rectangular tiles (shown in the center of the picture above).

These are the tools we used: (l-r) glass cutter, running pliers, nippers, and pliers.  The glass cutter resembles and exacto knife and it used like a pencil to score the glass.  The running pliers are used to snap a piece of glass in half along a straight score line made by the glass cutter.  The nippers are used to nip irregular shaped pieces of glass from the edges of larger pieces of glass.  The pliers are used to break apart pieces of glass that have a non-linear score line or that aren't quite large enough to work with the running pliers.

I'm using the running pliers to snap a piece of glass in half that I already scored with the glass cutter that's sitting on the table. 

This is the grinder. If your glass doesn't break cleanly and there are some jagged edges, you can use the diamond bit grinder with water to sand down the sharp or uneven sides.
 
At the end of the 3 hour class, I had a ton of new knowledge from our instructor, Amy Black, as well as a small container of rectangular tiles and a bunch of pieces selected to cut next week.  At the last minute, I saw the red glass and thought about adding it to the turquoise, green and white for an extra pop of color.

So, what do you think, blog readers?  Should I use the red glass?  :)

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