Designing Your Mosaic

This 'How To Mosaic' outlines some tips and resources to get you started designing your own mosaic.

Inspiration can come from anywhere; books, magazines, the internet, the environment and photographs (just to name a few). Unless you are great at drawing freehand from memory you will need some type of source material to reference your design to. Developing a reference library of your own is a great resource and can be made up of photos, images or patterns from the internet, pages taken from magazines. Google image search offers an amazing selection of images on virtually any subject.

The basic rule of thumb when it comes to designing your image is to keep it simple. A cartoon or an outline of your design is all that's required. There is no need to add shading or detail to the design, the detail will come from your materials and grout.

• Google images
• Children's colouring in books are a great source of images. The images are outlines with not too much detail; they are cheap and available in a wide range of themes.
• www.mosaicpatternsonline.com
• Stained glass patterns, either online or in book form. A great online resource is the website Free Stained Glass Patterns on the Web
• Source books such as the Dover Pictorial Archive Series

• Depth, dimension and style can be added to your mosaic through the use the design elements of andamento, texture, grout lines and colour 
• Using two different colours or shades will give depth to an area that would otherwise have been flat with one colour only.