Bead Mosaic

So, in April I went to Florence, Italy. (I specified the country because upon googling "Florence" I found a number of cities of the same name, but on the wrong continent.) Florence is incredible! It's beautiful to look at. The bridges, the architecture, even the people are beautiful to look at. The river Arno, which runs through Florence, is not so beautiful, especially with a rat swimming in it:

However, I digress. I was transfixed by the art in Florence. Sure, they have paintings by the Masters and sculptures...some wonderful, some which make you wonder:




But nothing that struck my fancy like: mosaics. They sparked my imagination and delighted my eyes.

Since then, I've been trying to recreate mosiacs in materials other than stone or glass. Naturally, I turned to seed beads. So far, I've created the following:


This is the top of a paper mache box. I'm working on the sides now. I used some round beads square stitched together and some square beads stitched together to make "tile. That worked pretty well. Between and around the "tiles" I glued rows of black square beads as "grout." I intend to perfect the techniques for bead mosaics and create more.



Here I am beading the roof of a paper mache house box. I started out with twisted bugle beads, but realized they were not flexible enough or big enough to do the entire job.









Here I am using peacock-colored square beads to cover the roof. I did square stitch some of the beads into tiles, but it was just as fast to glue them on one at a time. This portion took me about 4 hours. Not a fast process, but it is rather relaxing.

The bottom picture is Jazzmyn checking out my latest creation.