Adhering Mosaic Tiles for Your Tile Mosaic Project

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Faith, and I’m here at Flat Fork Studio and I’m here to show you how to adhere tiles for your tile project onto your wire mesh which will then be transferred to your final piece. Previously we drew out our pattern onto the paper the next step is to take some fiberglass mesh place it over the top so you can still see the pattern- the lines- through the mesh. Here is an example that I’ve already started. Basically you dry set the tiles- you set them on their dry- and you follow the pattern around the lines. See, this piece will fit into there. I think this piece fits right here. Sometimes it takes a little jiggling to find the proper way that it goes, for the best fit. So now we have our pattern lined out and these are just dry set onto the mesh. From here, I take tape and I start taping over my pieces. What this does is it keeps the pieces in place while I…in a minute we’ll turn them over and then I’ll put the adherent to the back- the glue, the liquid nails- I’ll put this on the back of this. So then at that point we can transfer it onto our original piece. So let’s go ahead and finish this one. This will allow me- this will keep all the tiles in place so that all I have to do is flip this over. Now from here we want to adhere the mesh to the back of the tiles. Here I would get some liquid nails, caulk tube, and go ahead and place a little dab onto each piece. You don’t need much, just a little bit of caulk. Now I’ll take a spatula or a putty knife and gently press the glue through the mesh onto the backs of the tile. You set that aside and let that dry, and when you’re finished you have a piece that looks like this. And you see we didn’t press hard enough to let the glue come up past the surface. And that is how you adhere, you transfer your tile pieces onto the mesh."