Making Mosaics with Children Part Five

I have been working extremely hard trying to finish a piece for the exhibition - the pieces will be hung next Wednesday. In the spaces in between, Isabella and I have worked on her mosaic projects too (she jumps up and down with excitement when I suggest that we do some mosaics together!) and she has made three lovely pieces of her own. We have experimented with three new methods of these that I will present on this blog over the next few days.

This project involves replicating the idea of cement adhesive to push mosaic pieces (tesserae) into. Instead of using cement, we used air drying clay ('das').

You will need some air drying clay and 'tesserae' of your choice. Isabella used shells and beads, but you can use a wide range of things - for a list of the things you can use to make children's mosaics see my previous post (titled 'Making Mosaics with Children Part Two').

Roll out the clay. Make sure it is thick enough so that pieces can be pushed in sufficiently to hold (say half an inch).

Cut the clay into the shape you want - we made a rectangle. Use a piece of straw to make a hole for hanging the finished piece.


The tesserae can now be pushed into the clay to make the mosaic picture. The beauty of using the clay is that you can create lovely effects by putting pieces in at different angles and heights - you can see how Isabella chose to put some of her shells in vertically which looks lovely and creates shadows as you walk past it.

We will definitely be trying this method again with different types of tiles - it has worked really well and is very easy for even young children to do.