SAMA 2014 ~ Mixing It Up & Making It Great!

Mixing it Up & Making it Great!
Expanding Your Creativity with New Products and Technology

Steve's thorough demonstration on using the Morton
Portable Glass Shop to cut a variety of shapes and tiles

The Society of American Mosaic Artists just hosted the annual American Mosaic Summit in Houston, Texas. For the second year, instructors Susan Gamble, Steve Shupper, and Carrie Strope Sohyda have taught the "Mixing It Up & Making It Great" workshop, in which student's learn about free-form compositions, exact cutting of glass and ceramic tiles and working quickly and spontaneously to finish a mosaic in under four hours.

Arranging Santa Theresa Tileworks theme packs
to guide mosaic composition.

The session began with students getting a walk through overview of the Morton Portable Glass Shop. Steve Shupper demonstrated the basics of glass cutting, followed by using the Morton system to make strips, squares, triangles and diamonds.

Heat setting No Days Groutless to finish off the mosaic without grouting.

Carrie Strope Sohayda demonstrated how she frames her mosaic with geometric shapes and sets everything in place using No Days Groutless Mosaic Adhesive. After heat setting the border pieces, Susan and Carrie talked about different ways to compose mosaics.

The border is set in place, and then Santa Theresa tiles are
moved around until the composition looks great.

After cutting glass and ceramic tiles and arranging the pieces, students were able to heat set their mosaics. The great thing about using No Days Groutless Mosaic Adhesive is that as soon as the mosaics cool down, students can be finished. Toni chose not to grout her quilt mosaic (below).

Not only did we skip grouting, we attached a hanger
to the back of the mosaic using No Days Groutless.

Students were given the option of grouting their mosaics to finish, as well. As soon as her tiles were heat set and then cooled for 5-10 minutes, Jennifer finished her mosaic by grouting. We attached hangers to the back of the pieces using the No Days Groutless, as well. That means that they are ready to hang instantly!

Jennifer decided to grout her mosaic, which she was able to do
as soon as the piece cooled.

Below are pictures of the sample mosaics that No Days Artist & Instructor Carrie Strope Sohayda made while demonstrating No Days mosaic adhesives in the vendor marketplace.

Carrie created a No Days Groutless mosaic in a free-form
style, adding and taking away pieces until the composition worked.

The border pieces were repositioned to straighten them out.
Repositioning or removing pieces is as easy as reheating with the heat gun.

See more pictures of the SAMA workshop on Facebook or Google+...

Post by No Days Adhesives.