Mosaic Tool: Curved Tweezers

Recently I found these nifty little tweezers and they have made the handling of small triangular shaped pieces of glass and tile a breeze. 

No more flying glass bits and no more frustration of trying to get the tweezers exactly on a triangle point. That point is at home nestled in the curve of the tweezers!

I found these on eBay, but there may be other sources. Mine were called "Bead Handling Tweezers" and their intended purpose is ease of picking up just that one particular bead you need from a tray or jar. Works just as beautifully for selecting just the right triangle for your mosaic art work in progress.

New (old) tool for breaking curves in stained glass

Some times the 'old fashioned' way really is easier and better. Case in point the old stand-by (oil less) glass cutter . I have one of these but the constant need to dip the cutter end in oil had it sitting in a drawer as a backup only.

What I had not fully appreciated was the wonderful efficiency of the ball end for breaking out curved score lines. Especially long score lines. So simple, so quick. Just hold a corner of the glass with either fingers or pliers, tap that ball end on the underside of your score line and be sure to have that glass over a table because it will break beautifully along that line most wonderfully and unexpectedly almost every time. Or did everyone know this and I am the last?


I suppose my only excuse is that often I work with tiny pieces and it is not as much use in that case but I can assure you that this simple tool will no longer be relegated to the dark corners of a drawer but will have a home on my work desk.

Just to be fair, I do have another good tool, a type of running plier, for breaking out curves and will still use this on smaller pieces of glass.

Piecing a Mosaic Rose

Who knew, dressmaker's tracing paper can also be used to trace a design on glass. I used this method first when making my self portrait mosaic.

Here I use it to make a rose. Yes, green. This is part of a custom stepping stone for a wedding and it will also have green hydrangeas. Looks pretty combined with the chocolate brown for the writing. Still a WIP so I'll post more pictures later.



First tip is to make sure your glass is very clean.

This method also works best if the sections of your motif can be systematically cut away from the design and still keep the pieces whole. This pattern I made was almost ideal. Piece # 16 ended up in three pieces.

I also numbered the pattern and glass pieces to make putting it back together so much easier.

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