Wednesday, October 13, 2021

How To Make Your Own DIY Smalti Glass Tesserae for Mosaic

I wanted to make my own glass tesserae for a new mosaic. The tesserae are the pieces that you mosaic to your substrate or board. I have been working with Orsoni smalti in the direct method with no grout. The smalti I purchase from Italy is usually about 5/8" x 3/8" x 1/4" but does vary in size because it is handmade. Orsoni uses a large chopping machine to fracture the glass and then I place the cut side facing up in my mosaics. Here is the chopping machine my amazing husband made using my hardie and hammer so my arm wouldn't get tired!


Homemade smalti chopping machine DIY Smalt Glass Mosaic How to make your own Sharon Warren Glass SharonWarrenGlass FlutterbyButterfly
A diy homemade smalti chopping machine


Smalti starts as a round slab of opaque glass called a pizza. I can buy lots of solid colors, but not any streaky tessera. So my first step was to melt some scrap Bullseye glass into my own streaky glass pizzas using a pot melt techique in my kiln. 


Pot Melt Fused Glass DIY Smalt Glass Mosaic How to make your own Red Blue Green Streaky Sharon Warren Glass SharonWarrenGlass FlutterbyButterfly
My kiln set-up to make pot melts.

Pot Melt Fused Glass DIY Smalt Glass Mosaic How to make your own Red Blue Green Streaky Sharon Warren Glass SharonWarrenGlass FlutterbyButterfly
Pot melt pizzas from scrap Bullseye Glass


The finished glass pizzas are beautiful and can be used in other fused glass projects, but these are for mosaics. To chop up my glass pizzas, I used my very own smalti chopping machine. Here is a video of it in use, I think it really works phenomenally well. 



I took the time to chop up some streaky red, some green and a bit of blue. I am so happy with the results! I should note that the streaky glass did not always break square to the surface like the purchased Orsoni. This could be because I made the pizzas out of a different type of glass or maybe because the pizza is made of many different colors running at different angles to the surface. I'm not sure but I have so much glass made that I can pick and choose the pieces I use.


DIY Smalt Glass Mosaic How to make your own Red Blue Green Streaky Sharon Warren Glass SharonWarrenGlass FlutterbyButterfly
Home made streaky red glass smalti

DIY Smalt Glass Mosaic How to make your own Red Blue Green Streaky Sharon Warren Glass SharonWarrenGlass FlutterbyButterfly
Home made streaky green glass smalti

DIY Smalt Glass Mosaic How to make your own Red Blue Green Streaky Sharon Warren Glass SharonWarrenGlass FlutterbyButterfly
Home made streaky blue glass smalti


Now to make some mosaics! Maybe a landscape with water flowing across or a field of trees in shades of green.


Sharon Warren Glass | sharonwarrenglass | sharonwarrenglass.com | FluttterByButterfly | Sharon Warren Glass Artist


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