Ep. 115 MAKING FRITBALLS FOR MOSAIC MANDALAS, a few Wearable Mosaics, and an Easy Mosaic Tray!

Ep. 115 MAKING FRITBALLS FOR MOSAIC MANDALAS, a few Wearable Mosaics, and an Easy Mosaic Tray!

I start by organizing for the mandala community project. Fritballs are the name of the game at the beginning. I decide NOT to put fritballs on the six smallest ones, then dump them in specific areas to make sure I have enough and then glue a few in place as a visual reminder for me. This process is five times more complex than last year's mandalas, because there are so many designs to figure out. I need to figure out what fusible rounds are... I show the glass that will be used for the mandalas. Then I select some COE 96 glass to make into fritballs. Then some cutting and nipping of stained glass happens to build up a supply for new fritballs. The dark blue irridized Wissmach is one of my favorites! I use my Breda wheeled nippers to give my hands a break. The Breda's use less effort to cut the glass.
Next, I make another ring/pendant set with ladybug murrini chips and white filati in a flower base. I have one more pendant to make from a bezel I purchased on Etsy. I mixed up some golden Apoxie Sculpt from yellow and orange to have behind my bee and the 24k gold smalti. I ended up trimming the extra clear glass around the bee so I could fit more gold in.
I found the fused glass rounds - not fritballs, so not for the mandalas. Nice for a different mosaic though! Also - who doesn't like a sweet donation like this?
In the kiln room, I load the kiln with my small bits of glass. I start by stacking the purple cathedral glass on top of white glass so I can see the color better. Then I load in my dark blue and all the other colors. It is scorching hot in the kiln room - August in Atlanta + running a big kiln = SO HOT!!!! The important thing to do is separate the little pieces so they don't touch and accidentally fuse together. Not shown in the video was the two times I dropped an empty container on the purple and had to restack it while sweat dripped into the kiln!!!! I take advantage of every last bit of kiln paper to make fritballs.
Back home I reward myself for this summer's mosaic projects with an EASY MOSAIC TRAY! I bought the tray at Target for $5? or maybe $3? I seal it with 50/50 Weldbond water mixture. I repeat step 1. Seal it. It is a very simple crazy paving design from tile I have in my bathroom. Step 2. - I use sidebiters to break the tile. Step 3 - I use Laticrete 254 thinset as my adhesive, and begin laying in pieces that I dry laid on the opposite side while my thinset was slaking. There is the tiniest bit of keystoning to fit around the curved ends, but not too much as I want to keep the design irregular. It goes together very quickly and is an excellent beginner project. I show the importance of scraping away thinset that has skimmed over and is no longer very good for adhesion. Then I use a meat tenderizer to make sure the pieces are relatively even.
Two days after loading, I'm back at the kiln to unload. It is a WAY more pleasant temperature. The kiln lid is heavy! Jury is out on the purple ones as they seem rather dark. Then I show the existing mandalas where we used fritballs. When I get home, I use a colander to rinse the kiln paper off the fritballs and WOWZA - they clean up nicely! The green fritballs look great! The blue is great! The light blue is great! Oh yeah, FRITBALLS ARE GREAT! I can't wait to see these go onto the mosaic mandalas.
Then it is time to grout my tray. It is a pretty quick job using the Pre-mixed Laticrete grout. In fact, there is more time spent waiting between the steps than actual grouting and buffing. Next, I adhere four thick glass tiles to the bottom of the tray with E6000 to keep it off the counter where it might get wet. Then I set it up in the bathroom and show the lovely tile wall behind the toilet that inspired the simple mosaic tray project!
That's Putting It Together Ep. 115. Thanks for watching. See you next time!

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