by Chaton

Created on: November 11, 2008   Last Updated: December 13, 2008

If you notice, you'll see many forms of glass mosaics around. Many artists work with glass smalti, tesserae or tiles in various sizes from tiny '' to '' that you can order online at many good glass tile mosaic stores. The tiles come in square shapes of various colours of the rainbow! You can also purchase the larger 1'' glass tiles at hardware or ceramic stores. These tiles are thicker and more difficult to cut and work with unless you simply use the pieces to make geometric designs without too much cutting involved. I do use them from time to time when a client specifies it, '' glass tiles that I buy from a speciality shop to do certain projects. But in the long run, it is more expensive and trickier to work with, especially if you have to cut them. So over the years, I have developed my own method of creating glass mosaic tiles using leftover stained glass shards.

Before making mosaics over twelve years ago, I used to make stained glass projects. I discovered mosaics and never went back. Yet, upon looking at my inventory of stained glass sheets, I decided to use them in making my mosaic creations. Eventually, I discovered that I could actually buy stained glass shards and pieces on EBay for much cheaper than buying small sections at the local stained glass store. Go onto EBay and often, you can find stained glass artists selling their glass shards in mixtures of various colours and textures! I even bought a few years ago, from the estate of a deceased stained glass artist, over 100 lbs of glass sheets, shards and beads for very very cheap, including shipping.

There are even some that sell their shards in 1, 2 and 5 lb bags that have been tumbled so that there are no sharp cutting edges remaining. What I like about these is that the pieces are already all mosaic sized and you just use them as they are. They make great projects and their appearance is random and beautiful! I order a few pounds every now and then and when they arrive, I sort them out by colour and put them in my jars ready to use for when I need them.

Another way I have discovered is that when I use shards that are bigger, or I need several tiles of the same coloured glass, I simply cut the glass with a glass cutter into small squares and tumble them in a small machine to get rid of the cutting edges. I found a few years ago, an old tumbler for $5.00 on EBay. I load the tumbler up with freshly cut glass tiles, enough water to cover them and a drop of dish soap (to remove the dirt and glass cutter

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