More Shading Grout in a Mosaic

Revisiting the topic of shading grout in a mosaic. In a previous post I shaded using two grout colors.

For this project, I shaded between four grout colors. The fade from deep black/green to pale green was chosen to enhance the glass shading.

First step was to play with mixes to find the effect I wanted. I used a plastic spoon, leveled off with a wooden stir stick as a measuring device. Stirred well, the dry mix color will be approximately the same as the finished, cured, color.

(Each recipe was written on the cup so it can be duplicated in the future, assuming those grout colors can be obtained. I used the colors black, mallard green, tea green and straw [no, not pear like it says on the cup, oops :] - for those that might have those colors on hand.)



Working from light to dark, I laid in each color. Since my substrate was glass, I marked it off into sections on the reverse using a sharpie marker. You might be able to see that in the first picture- green marks.

Picture on the right shows the grouted project before much 'smooshing' has happened.






In the left picture, you can see the results of careful cleaning. **Note: NO WATER, and no sponge, is used for this cleaning method.

First I removed excess grout. I started from the light end and moved across the piece from side to side just within that color. Then cleaned my tool (my finger!) and moved down a bit and repeated until I removed a lot of the excess from the entire piece.

Still with the grout very wet and soft, I started again at the light end removing a bit more grout but this time made a zig zag line across from side to side. I continued on down toward the dark end in this zigzag manner and this helped to blend each grout section.

At this point, much of the excess grout has been wiped off and I waited a bit for a haze to develop. I then used a soft cloth to remove the haze, again starting from the light end and working across from side to side. I used a clean section of cloth for each pass.

And here is the finished project, a wall clock.






SOLD

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