Estimated time to read - around 3 minutes

This year I started a new mosaic membership, where the main premise is that each month I provide a prompt to help people get creative with their mosaic making.

The idea of providing prompts is not a new concept. A quick google search will bring up lots of sites with art prompts - ideas to motivate and inspire.

So why exactly are they helpful? As someone who has both used prompts in my own practice as well as created prompts for students, here are a few of my thoughts.

This year I decided to set up a new mosaic membership programme. But before I launched straight into offering this to the public, I wanted to have a bit of a practice.

So I invited some of my students to join me for a trial version for three months to see what they thought. We have just finished our first month in the membership and today I thought I’d share a few reflections on how things have gone (spoiler alert - it has gone sooo well!)

Estimated time to read - Under 3 minutes

A few years ago I made a mosaic a little bit different from my regular, more abstract work. Once There Were Elephants was displayed in York and London in exhibitions hosted by the British Association for Modern Mosaic. It elicited several questions about how it was made. So today I’m sharing a bit more detail about the process.

The idea for this piece came from another mosaic I had made a couple of years previously, which was in turn inspired by a rhino, more specifically, the decline in their population numbers.

Estimated time to read - around 3 minutes

When people ask me what made me want to start making mosaics, I usually tell them the story of how I visited a mosaic exhibition and was inspired by the art there. However, my very first foray into making a mosaic was a few years before that, when I decided I wanted to make something for my dad’s 60th birthday. He has been a keen gardener all his life and is interested in nature conservation, particularly butterflies and moths. So I decided to make him a mosaic for the garden, based on a photo of a moth that he had taken.

Estimated time to read - around 3 minutes

Today I wanted to take time to recognise that when it comes to mosaics, we should take some time to shift our focus from the end product to what’s going on during the making part.

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I am a bit of a hoarder. I am also a bit of a magpie. These two elements are both a blessing and a curse when it comes to creating mosaic art.

When it comes to materials there are just so many things that can be used to create mosaics - I see the potential in lots of different materials, both traditional and non-traditional. As a result I keep hold of lots of things, just in case they come in useful.

Estimated time to read - under 3 minutes

I have recently finished teaching a mosaic course, where we do not make any mosaics for the first two sessions. Instead we take time to plan things out, experiment and play with different ideas.

These early stages of making a mosaic, the ones where you develop your ideas and try things out, are really important. Because a finished piece of work does not appear from nowhere. Time needs to be spent thinking, researching, experimenting and planning before the first tessera gets anywhere near being stuck down.

These days it feels like that if you want to succeed on social media you need to be making videos. Our attention spans seem to be getting shorter and video is a great way to make people stop and look at what you are doing.

As a small business owner I’ve been making videos of my work for a few years now. So today I thought I’d share some hints and tips for creating videos of your work.

It has been full systems go on mosaic kit production recently. It’s almost like I have my own little Santa’s workshop, complete with elves to assist me, although I’m not sure my teenagers, who are helping me, would be willing to dress the part!

But I guess, when you think about it, it is not surprising that the kits are popular. Here’s what I’ve come to learn about kits over the past year or two, as I’ve been designing and assembling them.

There are times when I do not feel like creating. Times when I feel uninspired and cannot get started on anything. And even though I have a list of ideas that I add to whenever I think ‘Oh, that would be a good idea for a mosaic’, none of them seem to get those creative juices flowing.

But this feeling of not knowing where to start is not unfamiliar. In fact I’m sure you’ll have experienced some kind of creative block at some stage. That feeling where nothing really inspires you and you don’t know where to start.

So today let’s look at some ways to deal with that.

This week, November 14-18th is Anti-Bullying week so it seems an appropriate time to share some details on a mosaic I made last year which centers on the impact of being bullied. I called it ‘The Weight of Words’.

I started thinking about creating this mosaic during a period of time when my daughter was being bullied in high school. It was a difficult time for her, being on the receiving end of constant snide remarks and put-downs from her peers. I felt angry and frustrated with these children who could not see the impact of their words.

I’ve noticed a chill in the air recently and it is most definitely starting to look a bit more autumnal round here. The cooling temperature brings with it a reminder that I need to start being careful where I leave my mosaics to dry if I want to avoid a common problem - efflorescence.

So what is that exactly? Well, it’s a very annoying white ‘bloom’ that appears over the surface of the adhesive as it dries.

How do you celebrate your successes? As a small business owner it can be hard work at times to manage everything, so when I had a successful launch of my mosaic kits a few months ago, I decided to treat myself to something to celebrate!

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. There are things that happen when making a mosaic that we often don’t talk about. Times where parts don’t look right and need to be changed, often resulting in a pile of mess like in the photo below.

These are the bits of my artwork that don’t usually see the light of day. But I wanted to share them, not only because I actually quite like the photograph of all the mess, but also because they are part of the process.

I’ve started doing something in my online classes that can sometimes be a bit stressful. And while the temptation to abandon this part of the teaching can be strong at times, I persist with it.

So what’s causing the stress? Well, I’ve been making a mosaic in class. Ok, I know that sounds kind of obvious for a mosaic class, but I’m not just doing small demonstrations, I am making a mosaic from start to finish. I am letting people see the full, unedited process, from creating the design to putting the mosaic together.

If you had asked me a couple of years ago whether I would consider teaching online, I would have said no.

Fast forward to the present and I’ve figured a few things out! Not only have successfully incorporated online teaching into my business model, but I have picked up plenty of tips and tricks along the way.

Slate is a hard material to work with and I am often asked what I use to break it up with. In truth, there is no single tool that is best, although, if hard pushed I’d go for a hammer as that can do most jobs!

Instead there are a number of different tools I use, depending on what kind of slate I’m working with and how I’m trying to cut it. So today I thought I’d share a few of these tools with you.

Have you ever created a mosaic that didn't turn out quite as you imagined it would? A couple of years ago, at the start of the pandemic, I created a mosaic inspired by images I had seen of star trails.

The simplicity of the concentric circles was appealing, but the first mosaic I made inspired by the star trails ended up being more of a swirling spiral!

‘Where do you get your slate?’

This is something I get asked a lot. The most common reason for asking, is that people want to know how to source slate for their own artwork. After all, slate is an attractive rock and works well in mosaics.

So let me tell you a bit about the slate I use in my mosaics, where it comes from and offer a few suggestions for sourcing your own slate.

Inspiration for mosaics can come from all sorts of places. In this post I share the details of a piece that evolved from a photograph taken by the coast.