Mosaic created for a private bathroom. The sketch at right is for the client's approval, a colored version of the sketch made on graph paper.

I used the indirect method, using the grid to recreate the mosaic on brown paper in life size (she's almost six feet tall). The tiles are then lightly glued onto the brown paper upside down (as if you're buried under the mosaic looking up).

Most of the time was spend using nippers to shape the tiles. Each ceramic tile is only one square inch, but I had to nibble hundreds of tiles to get the circles for the pearls and to fit the curves of her body.

Next I cut the paper into squares and flipped each section tile-side-down onto the cement-board floor, which is covered in mastic glue. Finally, I filled in the spaces between tiles with black grout.