Beyond mosaics – I call what I do Glass Shard Painting. By placing thousands of carefully hand-nipped glass shards utilizing direction and color, I am effectually creating an image one shard-stroke at a time. Before all that, though, comes lots of preparation. First, I nip those thousands of glass shards.
Next, I tumble the shards to remove any sharp edges so they don’t bite the hand that glues them.
Once my substrate (typically primed plywood) is ready, I sketch out some guidelines and begin gluing away. This is by far the most time-consuming part of the process. Depending on the size of the piece, this can take a month and a half or longer.
Sometimes I add in fused glass elements or features that aren’t glass at all, like wire.
When all the glass and any other additional elements are glued, I do a glue wash to fill in any gaps and make sure everything is fully secured to my substrate.
After allowing this wash to dry for a couple of weeks, I can finally grout. Grouting is what really brings the piece together.
Finally, I give my mosaic a custom-made frame, which involves gluing, staining or painting, sawing, drilling, and waxing the frame to get it together and mounted onto the mosaic. I feel making my frame gives my piece that final, polished touch. This video shows a quick, condensed recap with the framed mosaic at the end.