Conquistador mosaic guitar

Using the Procol Harum lyrics as inspiration, I chose the colors (red-orange, black, and 24K gold seemed Spanish to me) and the colors of the sea (pale turquoise and mottled blue) and the sand (grout).

 

I then gathered a few pieces of costume jewelry, a silver saddle and a silver disc to represent his stallion and his shield, and a strange brass piece that might have once been a belt buckle and looks like a conquistador's axe, a white sea shell that represents an angel's wing, a round turquoise tile and a sea turtle for the sea. I covered the hole with a piece of stained glass and then trimmed that with first a piece of black leather bolo tie and surrounding that, a bit of gold necklace. I scattered a few glass globs (flattened marbles) because I like the way they look but I use them sparingly. The guitar is outlined with 24K gold plate rim.

 

I cut out the stained glass flames with a Toyo oil hand cutter. I score the glass free-hand and use a Fletcher tool (looks like pliers) (both from stained glass shops) to put pressure on the scored line, and voila the glass pops apart right where I scored it (well, almost always). I nipped the other pieces of stained glass with Lepponit wheeler nippers and ground all the edges smooth with a carborundum stone. I used MAC glue. The tuners (turquoise glass beads), the strings (dichroic stringers), and the grout (sanded, Mapei Keracolor, pale brown for the body and black for the neck).

 

This guitar is for sale on Etsy.

 

More mosaic projects are on my blog: www.mosaicroad.blogspot.com.

 

See the lyrics to this song, and links to other articles about how to mosaic, on this hubpage: hubpages.com/hub/MosaicRoad

 

 

 

Done