TILES WANTED for The Starcross History Mosaics Project

With lots of help from the village, The Starcross History Mosaics Project will create a series of mosaics to celebrate its fascinating history.

The first design being worked on is for the forge.The forge mosaic will have an anvil, horse-shoes, hammer & tongs and a HORSE (of course), set against a background  of the red&orange-glowing coals of the furnace.
The forge used to be called Smiths Forge  The Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies   hold a bundle of documents, dated 1728-1894.

Another current design idea is of Brunel with his iconic cigar and stove-pipe hat, by a red sandstone tower.

The owner of the house where Captain Peacock lived, has kindly agreed to display our mosaic of The Swan of the Exe  - which will be based on this excellent photograph ( kindly forwarded by The Liverpool Archives) of Captain Peacock's folly, The Swan of the Exe, with Mr Dixon, of Dixon's Yard at Exmouth (where the yacht was built)  and Captain Peacock on board

Teignbridge District Council point out that the siting of mosaics might mean getting planning permission, and they have offered the help of their Community Art and Design Adviser.

Anyone could have a go at making a mosaic. But broken tiles can have sharp edges, cutting tiles can result in flying shrapnel, tile adhesive can stick to stuff you don't want it to, so be aware of the Health and Safety aspect of what ought to be a harmless hobby.

The steps to create an outside mosaic could be:
NB wear goggles to protect your eyes, and gloves to protect your hands.  Put your hands inside a pillowcase when you cut tessarae; to prevent pieces flying.

• Find a piece of wood with at least one side unvarnished and unpainted.
• Drill holes where you will fix it to a wall
• (you will leave a space around the fixing holes you have drilled - you tile over the top of the screws after the mosaic is fixed in place)
• Create a design out of simple shapes 
• Draw it onto the unvarnished, unpainted wood
• Collect the tessarae - which need to be small, thin and flat. You could use pebbles, or tiles, or pottery or shells. If you need to cut tessarae, do it inside a pillowcase to prevent pieces flying. 
• Sort the tesserae into colours
• Use WATERPROOF adhesive cement. Polyfilla is ideal. Either butter it on to the tesserae or put it onto the wood - whichever way suits you is best. 
• After it's dried for a couple of days, grout it all with WATERPROOF grout.
• Leave a couple more days.
• Use yacht varnish to make the wood waterproof on the back and the edge of the wood.

NB wear goggles to protect your eyes, and gloves to protect your hands.  Put your hands inside a pillowcase when you cut tessarae; to prevent pieces flying. 

There's lots more advice on the internet, but much of it is around mosaic suppliers. Using unwanted materials such as old/broken tiles and shells is the cheapo way


Please get in touch if you can add to this basic how2, or would help with this project. Do you have any plain coloured tiles? It doesn't matter if they are broken. Any colours, but we need red and orange for now. and silver and gold.
 
Many thanks to Joanne Bickel and Alma for their advice and encouragement.