Mermaid

This 30" x 30" work was my first endeavor in large glass collage which is a form of glass mosaic, but without the grouting!  Using GlassEye2000, I developed the major forms of the drawing, printed it to fit the size of the Ampersand Board I wanted to use, and then placed graphite paper under the drawing to trace my work.  I then did an underpainting in acrylic paint.  After the underpainting was dry, I glued fused glass pieces, cut glass pieces (run through a tumbler for 45 minutes with a teaspoon of Dawn detergent - takes off the sharpest edges), and found objects like rocks to the underpainting using Weldbond glue.  The composition was left for four days to dry and then covered with Envirotex Lite Epoxy Resin.  This can be a messy process and requires a lot of preparation like covering your work surface, wearing gloves, having a heat gun ready to get rid of bubbles (works as well as a torch and won't catch the resin on fire), having the project raised above the table or it will glue itself to the table, etc.  Strongly recommend starting with a small project.  After this project, I switched to using DaVinci Aqua Boards which have a 1/8" lip all around which helps to hold in the resin.  I love doing glass collages because you can use your left over glass from stained glass, you can fuse your stained glass into collage components (keep them separate from your "good" fused glass components), you don't have to worry about compatibility because the whole thing isn't fused, and the way glass looks with a layer of resin is absolutely spectacular.  This piece sold pretty fast but probably more because it is a really obvious red to green complimentary work.  Do not use magic markers as part of the underpainting because they will bleed under resin.

• Ampersand Board
• acrylic paint
• fused glass
• stained glass
• found objects
• resin
• glass stringers
• glitter
• dichroic glass