Creating Mosaic Logos

As many of you know, I don't take on many commission jobs. I am way too busy and never like the way my pieces turn out. I was approached by a company at the Tulsa House Beautiful show about doing a custom mosaic of their logo. It is to be 5 foot by 5 foot. I must have been feeling good that day because I told them "Sure, I can do this!"

After picking the 4 colors that would be used: French Violet, Peacock, Bubble, and P921, they gave me their business card that had the logo. My wonderful husband figured out how to blow up the image to the 5 foot by 5 foot size without losing too much of the design to pixels. I did go through and outline the large starburst so I could see it easier through the mesh. Now I am filling in the design by adhering the tiles to the mesh with Weldbond.

I laid out the design on cardboard boxes that I taped (and taped and taped) together. I then taped plastic wrap on the paper and then fiberglass mesh on the plastic. I taped all of this down well. Then I started to work.

I laid the central orbits first starting with the arrows. I tried to use as many whole tiles as possible since this will be placed on a floor. I did the blue first since it was the dominating shape.

Next I worked on the inner starburst. This was done in the French Violet using mostly half tiles cut into triangles. It gives it a nice texture that will be enhanced when the outer starburst is finished. The hardest part of doing this starburst was filling in the center. I was trying to not use anything smaller than a full half tile, so it was a difficult puzzle to complete. There are a couple of larger grout joints but I think it will look good when grouted.

Next it was time to do the letters...I had such a hard time with this. I was completely blocked for quite some time. My problem was that the letters are not a full tile wide. They are just under a full tile so I had to shave each tile off using the wheeled cutters. I was very worried because the tiles weren't perfectly smooth or perfectly straight. After seeing many other examples of mosaic letters and speaking with several people about it, I realized that this is how it has to be. The grout will actually smooth these out a lot.

So after working on these letters for what seems an eternity, I finally finished the lettering. I felt like I was carving each tile and I guess I was. I used my grozing pliers to smooth out the edges when I could.

The past couple of days I have been working on the outer starburst. Once again, I am trying to use more full tiles then not. With the angle of the points that was impossible though. So I lined the outside of each point with the full tiles and am filling in the gaps with odd shaped triangles (half pieces). Working around the letters has proved to be the most difficult so far. I am trying to fill in without making it look filled in. I am trying to achieve consistency between each point section. Today, I am going to try to finish as much of the inside as I can.