Oh Look, Natalya Made a Mosaic (Updated October 2018)

[BFenix]

Dope

[Natalya]

I was trying to perfect a "glass-on-glass" technique with these. Each of them has a square of glass behind the stripes. I used clear-drying silicone to affix the stripes to the back-piece. On the blue and yellow ones I didn't leave a grout gap, but I grouted the other 4. This picture is too small to see, but the first two I grouted (red+green and orange+blue) have splotches inside them where the grout seeped behind the tiles. For the 2 in the middle I made sure to use more silicone so the grout couldn't seep in between the stripe and the backer glass, so they have nice clean grout lines. My success with those two will let me move on to making actual pictures in this fashion -- stained glass mosaics, but transparent.

[Natalya]

See, they have a grout line, but no splotches really.

[Tzan]

Yeah I noticed some had no grout, before you added the text.
I was wondering how you stuck them together, but now I know.

Must be difficult to get no gaps on the no grout items.

I was thinking about this a while back but never mentioned it, til now.

I worked in the trade show design business for 3 years and something that gets used <a href='http://tinyurl.com/y42zurt'>alot</a> is Light Boxes for backlit plexi graphics.
http://www.anythingdisplay.com/page/dis ... Agdr8P8HAQ

Not cheap, but maybe with enough Googling you'll find something.
With the glass you use, you would need a milk white plexi sheet behind the glass, to diffuse the light and not actually see the fixture.

[Natalya]

With only 3 joints per piece it was easy to do it, but a more complicated mosaic like one of the faces I've done, well, it's possible but very very difficult. I actually like to use the grout lines as part of my designs anyway so I don't want to eliminate them, but here I was trying to make sense of how to make them not extend into the back of the mosaic.

[Tzan]

I added more above.

[Natalya]

Depends on what I'm doing. A lot of the stuff I've done wouldn't work with back lighting because it is too opaque.



The stars and some of the swirls would be amazing, but the black part and some of the blue swirls are totally opaque. My pixelart ones are also no-gos when it comes to this. But I like the idea and I'll probably try something like this. I would just make my own box though instead of buying one.

[Tzan]

I was reading on the lightbox site.
The trick is using 1/8th inch white plexi.
Any thicker and it will eat all the light.

<a href='http://tinyurl.com/y42zurt'>alot</a> of times when people make backlit graphics they intentionally make some areas opaque like a solid background color and others like a logo and text translucent.

[Overwatch_Elite]

How much for the backyard? Does it come with the wheel barrow?

[Zupponn]

Next time on Natalya Plays With Adult Legos...

[Quadruple.Digits]

Next time on Natalya Plays With Adult Legos...

What do you mean, Adult Legos? Of course Lego is for adults!

[Natalya]

Remember OP? Well check this out, the logical successor to the first mosaic posted in this thread.

At the time I made the mosaic in OP I was aware of this image, but I didn't feel like I was up to the challenge. There were so many things I didn't know about at the time which would have completely fucked me over had I attempted this way back then, so it's good that I made the smaller pixel art link when I was starting out.

But now I'm going for the big leagues.

You see, this piece does look pretty simple, and it is in ways very similar to the original link, but the larger size demanded way more thought and planning than was needed for the original. This Link is 25" x 19.4" (including the frame) and weighs 17 pounds or 7.7 KG. Take a look at how I constructed the back:




In this WIP shot you can see I used a large piece of ½" thick concrete backer board to glue the tiles on to, but although the CBB is very rigid (good for the mosaic to prevent grout cracking), it is a little fragile, and so it both needed some extra support AND it needed the wood there so that I could mount the frame to the wood instead of the CBB. A test piece of CBB split when I put a screw into it sideways, so wood with pilot holes was the way to go for fastening the aluminum frame pieces. For the original Link, I mounted him to a piece of ¾" MDF-type particle board and drilled the screws for the frame directly into that, but particle board is more forgiving than CBB. Also, because the piece was already super heavy, I opted to just use 3½" wide and ¾" thick wood with mitre joints on the back with a clear area in the middle instead of just laminating a full sheet of plywood or MDF to the CBB as I had done for my most recent Major Kusanagi and the Jammer girl I recently posted. I don't have a shot of it, but having the centre be open was also smart because then at the top of the insert I put in ½" thick piece of plywood and used that to mount the hanging wire. This means the hanging wire is recessed by ¼" which allows Link to lie almost flush against the wall he is mounted on, instead of at an angle. So you see, although the artwork is conceptually similar just at a larger scale (pixelart using square tiles with an aluminum border) the construction of this piece is much more advanced and rugged and took a lot of planning and figuring out on my part for me to put it together properly. This thing is solid and durable, it should last for many years.




This pic was from before I put the frame pieces on the sides. You can see the thickness of the CBB and the reinforcement wood on the back. Heavy duty construction to support the weight and provide a good surface for the mounting screws. I should note here that the aluminum I used for the angles is of the same type as that on the original Link, but that these aluminum angles ate 1" wide instead of the ¾" angles I used on the original. It just helps the frame look better proportionately. Also, I keep saying "frame" but I guess the more technical term is "border" because the aluminum angles do nothing to contain the picture, they're just there to help make it look nice and clean and sexy.

Anyway, I hope y'all like this as much as I do. I was looking at it yesterday morning and my girlfriend walked by and was like, "Oh, of course, there you are praying to it." Which made me think of a line from Interstellar (2014) which was an awesome movie that you all need to watch 5 times.

[Tzan]

Looks awesome!

I like how the tiles are arraigned very square.
Thanks for the work in progress shots.

[ikensall]

and was like, "Oh, of course, there you are praying to it."

Only a twu artiste can understand. Nice mosaic too.

[Natalya]

and was like, "Oh, of course, there you are praying to it."

Only a twu artiste can understand. Nice mosaic too.