Your mosaic may not even make it to the gluing stage. Faced with the need to cut the tile, the project is abandoned, never to be seen again. The temptation to focus on the big picture at the expense of the small motor skills necessary to create that picture is enormous. Cutting is more than a preparation for mosaic. It dictates rhythm, spacing, the quality of the edges, and the overall “personality” of the surface. If the edges are rough, all subsequent decisions are more difficult. Practicing your cutting gives you a cleaner slate to work from and reduces the waste of material and frustration later on.
To practice, purchase some cheap tile or use broken china that you can practice with without feeling as though you are wasting your good material. Set a timer for a five or ten minute interval and cut one shape over and over again. Cut little squares for five minutes, then cut triangles for five minutes. Place them on a flat surface, but do not glue them down. Now look at the spaces between them. Are the edges clean or do they look a bit battered? Do all the pieces seem to match up in some way, or do they appear to belong to different mosaics? The visual check is important. Your hands can develop the muscle memory to cut pieces with more precision through practice, but your eyes are what will tell your hands how to improve.
If a piece breaks into a shape you did not intend, try not to discard the fragment right away. Turn it over in your hand and study the break. Sometimes the break will suggest an alternative place to position the cutting wheel on the tile the next time. One of the most common mistakes is to press the handles of the nippers together too hard and too fast in an effort to control the cut. The result is typically an edge that is rough and chipped, often with tiny little pieces missing that can make it hard to match up with other pieces. The solution is not to press harder but to develop a more sensitive touch. Steady the handles of the nippers in your hand, “cut” the tile with your eyes before you bring the tool to it, and squeeze with a steady, even motion rather than a quick, hard snap.
Another common error is to cut every piece to be exactly the same size, regardless of the visual interest that might be added to the surface by varying the size of the pieces. Too much uniformity can make a mosaic appear rigid and static. Try practicing with a mix of pieces that are a little larger and a little smaller in the same area, while keeping the overall spacing of the pieces calm and deliberate. If you find you are having trouble, don’t try to cut perfect pieces. Try to make the task easier. Cut a softer material, cut larger pieces, focus on getting clean edges rather than complex shapes. A beginner may think that success means being able to cut pieces that can form a recognizable image every time. But success may mean being able to cut ten simple pieces that lie against each other a little better than the ten you cut yesterday. That is improvement. You can even draw a simple curved line on a piece of paper and try to cut pieces that will approximate the line when placed side by side. This will help you understand how the relationship between pieces is more important than the individual fragment itself.
A good fifteen-minute practice session can be fit into even the most mundane of days. Spend the first part of the session cutting a single shape, then place the pieces in a line or loose grouping. Spend the second part of the session cutting the same shape again but with one adjustment in your cutting technique, such as applying softer pressure or cutting from a different angle. In the final part of your session, choose the three best pieces you have cut and the three worst, and compare them. This last step keeps the practice session from devolving into mindless repetition. After several days, you will begin to see a difference. The edges will be calmer, the spacing will improve, and you will start to feel like you are making deliberate choices rather than accidental ones. And as your cutting improves, you will become more confident with the design process. You will stop regarding every broken piece as a failure and begin to see the potential in irregular pieces. That is an important step, because mosaic art is at least as much about responding to opportunities as it is about advance planning. The medium “talks back.” A rough, fractured edge may suggest energy and movement to you, while a smooth, fluid line of tile may suggest a calm section. As you practice cutting patiently, you are not only learning how to cut tile. You are learning how to create coherence out of fragments, one deliberate piece at a time.