Glass Mosaic Gazing Ball - Part 6- Grout

I have completed grouting the gazing ball.  I used a sanded grout.  If you look at the top of the ball, you can see that the grout is a little darker than the grout beneath.  I had to make a repair in that area.  The grout did not stay in that area very well when I turned the ball over to grout the underside.  A little of it came out and had to be filled in again once the rest of the ball was dry.  It will soon dry to to same color as the rest of the grout.

This repair brings up an issue that can be used as a helpful hint.  When you purchase a bag of grout, the
inclination is to dump the whole bag in and add your liquid then mix it up as per the directions on the bag of grout.  I generally hold back a small amount of the grout for a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that if you have added too much liquid to begin with, you have no grout left to help thicken the mixture.  I have had that happen more than once.  Having a little grout mix in reserve can save the day.  If you had to make a trip to the hardware store for more grout, your grout may have set up and could be unusable by the time you return. 

The second reason is that you may need to make a repair and if you have no grout left, then you will need to go purchase more grout.  In the case of this sphere, the grout crumbled out of the bottom and needed to be patched.  Another common scenario with mosaics is that a tesserae will come loose from its adhesive and come off when you wipe down the ball after grouting it.  In that case, you will need to clear out the area, re-glue the piece, and grout around it again.  If your grout has already set up before you find it, it is nice to have a little reserve grout around to mix up for a small repair.

When I mentioned mixing the grout with liquid above, I used the word liquid rather than water.  When you are purchasing your grout, make sure to read the directions.  Some grout works by just adding water.  Other grout only works if you add a liquid acrylic ad-mix.  If you add water to that, you are going nowhere fast.  Generally, you can add some acrylic ad-mix to the grout that calls for water.  Why use an acrylic ad-mix if you can use only water?  Because is will help prevent water from penetrating the grout.  The ad-mix essentially encases the grout mix in a plastic waterproof substance.  It could help your ball last longer.  Using the acrylic ad-mix will add to the expense of the ball.  Generally you have to purchase it in a gallon or five gallon size.  Once in a while you can find a half-gallon of it in a home improvement store on online.  You are more likely to find the smaller size online.  The current trend is to only offer the larger sizes in the stores. 

 For this gazing ball I used a light gray grout.  You have a few other choices, at most hardware stores you can purchase grout colors in white, gray, black, almond, and a few variations in the shade of those colors.  A little experimenting on paper before hand can help you with your grout choice.  The choice of grout color and help blend the mosaic together or separate the tesserae so that the lines becomes the most important visual aspect. You can find powdered additives that you can add to the grout when you mix it in order to have different colors.  Most of the time you will have to order and purchase the powdered additives online.  The colored additives are not found at all hardware stores.

You can also use paint on your mosaic gazing ball.  I have read that you can add liquid craft paint at the time the grout is mixed to obtain a desired color.  I have not personally tried this.  My experience with adding paint to another substance (a clay made out of drier lint) was that I had to add a lot more paint than I thought to make it the color I wanted.  It turned out to be much more expensive to add paint to the material than it would have been to have just painted the object the color I desired once the material had dried.  And if you end up not having enough paint to make the grout your desired color, you either have to settle for an unacceptable color or start all over again because more than likely the grout you have mixed will be unusable when you return from purchasing more paint.

Another thing I have learned about grout color is that bright white grout shows a lot of dirt; much more so than a gray grout.   As the gazing ball will be outdoors spring through late fall, it tends to collect a fair amount of dirt and grime.  The dirt against bright white will be very noticeable against the white.

I intend to embellish the gazing ball by painting the grout lines.  I have already started painting, but have not completed it yet.  You will see the embellished gazing ball on my Thursday blog post.  I think you will be surprised at how much painting the grout will change the look of the ball.