How to Mosaic Using Broken Costume Jewelry

Images of broken light
which dance before me
like a million eyes
that call me on and on
across the universe
_{- The Beatles}

Costume jewelry
Mirror tile
Vitreous glass tile
Dichroic glass
Stained glass
Flat glass marbles
Leather bolo
Dichroic stringers
Rhinestones
Swarovski crystals
Glass beads

Note the Crab nebula (for my daughter who is a Cancer sign) and various spiral galaxies that were once brooches and pins.

This old guitar was broken, banged up and discarded when it came into my possession. I removed the hardware and sanded the wood, then painted the back and sides with a sea sponge (also called a silk sponge) using Ceramcoat acrylic paint, first black, then some purple, then metallic silver. I then randomly dotted with small white dots to give the illusion of a starry night.

I dug through all our stash of costume jewelry, collected over a ten-year period back in the day when you could buy a bag of mixed costume jewelry at Goodwill for $5 (now a bag sells for between $40 and $50). I looked at all our old brooches and pins and selected ones that look like space objects to me (spiral galaxies, etc.)

I had some shimmery old iridescent glass bits that were part of an antique bowl. I added mirror tile, dichroic glass, and glass beads. I included some stud earrings that were one of a pair; they may be diamonds or rubies, who knows? As always, I first chose one piece as a focal point and glued it down and then start filling in around it. That was the gold tone necklace which I used in its entirety (even including the clasp). I used MAC glue.

Here are a few tips and observations when using costume jewelry in mosaic work. Use a small wire-cutting tool to nip off the pins and backings. Be careful because they pop through the air with great speed, so plan on a way to contain them before nipping and protect your eyes. One method is to put the piece, your tool and your hand all into a large Ziplock bag.

Next, examine the back of the piece and see if it is flat or hollow. I like to fill in hollows so the piece has a flat base. To do this, I nip pieces of popsicle sticks and glue them to the back, thus creating a flat piece of tesserae.

You can nip dichroic glass just as you can ordinary stained glass (using wheeled nippers such as Lepponit). The bridge of this guitar is a dichroic glass hair clip. I had two of them, so I nipped the second one into pieces, smoothed the edges with my carborundum stone, and placed them randomly.

I bought the dichroic stringers at a fused glass shop in Austin, Helios Glass. I carefully measured the hole of the guitar and then snapped the long stringers into pieces. I lined them up and glued the ends to two pieces of popsicle stick. I waited until it was thoroughly dry before installing. I then loaded both pieces of popsicle stick with glue and carefully, at an angle, fed the strings/popsicle stick apparatus into the hole. I held it in place until I felt the glue had begun to set up, and then turned the guitar over and let the glue dry for a couple of hours.

I discuss how I install glass beads as tuners in my hub http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Use-Beads-as-Tuners-on-a-Mosaic-Guitar. I used the same method on this guitar, minus the chopsticks. This guitar is solid with holes drilled across for the tuners, whereas the Conquistador guitar had open slots. See the Conquistador guitar here: http://hubpages.com/hub/MosaicRoad.

As you can see from the picture, this piece was challenging to grout because of the different levels of the tesserae.

I talk about grouting in my hub http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Create-Mosaic-Art-A-Guide-for-Beginners. When you grout a piece such as this, with the different levels, you will need to do some patting and smoothing of the grout as well as just squooshing it on and wiping it off. You can also fine-tune the finish of your grout by carefully using a cosmetic brush dipped in water.

I also talk a bit about gathering up the tesserae needed for a project. A project like this one, with a theme of outer space, opens up so many possibilities because anything goes, and junk jewelry that has no other use whatsoever will add so much to the overall mosaic. One example, a necklace of rhinestones that spells out the year 2000, probably purchased to wear one time to a New Year's Eve party, outdated plus a couple of stones are missing. Nip it into several pieces and install it as stars. There's a star-shaped earring high up on the neck of this guitar; the mate went missing years ago. Old out-of-style brooches found at garage sales or flea markets become Andromeda or Ursa Major.

Go here: http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-mosaic-a-styrofoam-ball to read about using old necklaces and earrings for pierced ears and curved pieces of porcelain in a fun mosaic project.

I love music and I love to mosaic. I probably had more fun with this free-style spaced-out guitar than all the others I've done. Go to my blog to see other mosaic projects. http://www.mosaicroad.blogspot.com