Creating the Straw Hat for Miss Dolphin

Miss Dolphin is based on a drawing by my then 10 year old daughter and she was my design assistant for the mosaic as well. She had major input, as well as veto power, on the choosing of the materials for this project. We were bringing HER drawing to life, afterall.

The straw hat proved to be a challenge to find a material she would be happy with.

When I broke the lid to a funky corn-on-the-cob themed pot in my kitchen I thought that would be ideal--no. Also rejected was stained glass. (There is a limit to how thin the pieces can be cut so as to mimic straw, plus she didn't like the shininess.) Hmmm. Vitreous glass tiles- not thrilled. Tiny thin long glass beads? Not sure, kind of shiny too.

An internet search was begun and I found TinyTileMosaics! A eureka moment, lol. This company has a variety of shapes and a rainbow of colors of 'mini, mirco and nano' sized ceramic tiles. The Ovals, 5x2x3mm, proved to be perfect to create the straw hat!


Click image to enlarge-
Micro tiles, 5x5x3mm, were perfect to add a touch of red to the hat. See them also in the red stripe along with a couple nano tiles.

Happy daughter, happy me!

~~~~~~~

"Miss Dolphin" is in my own personal collection, but you can see available mosaics here:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MosaicSmith?search_query=mosaic+art 

I create original design silver jewelry too!!

http://MosaicSmith.com 

Miss Dolphin and a mosaic lesson learned

Going back in time a bit here to a project I completed, with the help of my then 10 yr old daughter's design, in October 2009. There are a few WIP pictures on flickr as well.

Miss Dolphin: Click image to view larger:

For this project we spent the summer collecting beads and whatnot's here and there in our travels, and online, particularly in red and white for the shirt.

I made the fortunate decision to grout the sections in different colors and to start with the white stripes. Usually I will tape off the sections before grouting but due to the crazy texture of the striped shirt I decided that I'd just go slow and tidy the edges using a toothpick after. Really glad on this choice because the slop of sanded grout on one particular type of red square bead scrubbed the color off those beads, yikes!! The project was salvaged with a short delay while I sought out replacements in a similar size and color.

Here are the offending beads after removal from the project:
I had to replace one purple bead as well in the beach ball during the grouting process. Not sure which store the problem beads were purchased from. Because of the quantity I have, I think it was a chain big-box store rather than a smaller bead store.

The Lesson- TEST your materials before use. Another mosaic blogger, TileMosaicGirl, had a similar experience with red glass gems and blogged about it here: photo slideshow and her experiment. She tested the materials both by scrubbing with grout and with sandpaper. She found that the sandpaper method was quite effective to test if the color would withstand grouting so in the future I plan to also test my materials this way.