Smashing Plates for Mosaics : Mosaic Project Tips

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Faith and I’m here at Flat Fork Studio, and I’m going to show you my favorite process of tile mosaic, which is smashing plates. You’ll need a few things for safety. You’ll need your safety goggles and a hammer, and ideally you would do this in probably a bucket, or you could even place a towel over the top of it if you’re afraid of the shards flying. Another thing that you might want to get is just a piece of sandpaper just to help smooth out any rough edges that you might get while you’re breaking your pieces. So I’m going to demonstrate now how to smash a plate, because there are some interesting ways to do it. Here we have a plate that I paid $2.95 for at a garage sale, and I’d like to break it. Basically, I would put the plate downward because it’s kind of hard to hit a plate, you know, when it’s sitting straight up you might hit it, and it might fly. So the best thing is to go ahead and hit it placed face down, and hit on the highest parts. There you go, so we’re starting to break. If you notice, it makes good, clean breaks. What we’re opting for is pieces that are, I don’t know, an inch to two inches in size. You want some triangular pieces, some square pieces are nice. I’m going to go ahead and continue…And that was why you wear the safety goggles, because one might fly up into your eye. Now say this piece, oh it’s a little sharp on the edge. I just take my sandpaper, rub it across there a few times, and now it’s smooth. And this is how I would smash a plate using a hammer and sandpaper. "