Purple Palace Art Studio - Time to Organize

Before I start a week long mosaic fest on a few gifts for my favorite people, I have to organize the glass, bits and pieces of dishes and tiles. Along with broken jewelry and other mixed media items I like to use. It all has to be within reach and somewhere I can find it easily.

 

When I spend time looking for what I need, the less time I'm at the table creating. Sometimes I keep things in the garage studio and spend a lot of time walking through it mumbling to myself. It's a bit more crowded in the Purple Palace, but if I know what I want to use, I can place it in the PPAS and not have to do more than stretch a bit. It's good to stretch.

 

Last week I shared a photo of the sorting I was doing on glass. It's almost all sorted now and back in the spot I like to keep it, in the Purple Palace art studio.

 

Beads, glass and mirror are in this little tower I've made. Next year shelves are going in here. That's the first on the "to do" list for 2024.

 

I'm, sorting the tiles and ceramic pieces now. The best "find" from this clean-up I'm doing so far is this little ceramic button in the photo above. I had it and quite a few other pieces made without button holes (years ago through beadfreaky on Etsy). This little disc has reminded me it's still here and ready for me to use. I'm thinking this might go on an empty wine bottle along with a broken blue denim mug. Creativity is blossoming!

With this clean-up comes some new glass from a favorite supplier mosaicsbymaria. There's my celestial colors right there. I have plans for these bad boys!

Meanwhile, I'm making wishes this holiday season for everyone to be safe, warm, fed, healthy and cared for and about.

It's also time for me to put out there what I'd like. It's real easy to shop for me. Broken plates and mugs, dark chocolate and red wine. What else?!

Enjoy the journey.

 Cindy aka EarthMotherMosaics

 

Support Independent Artisans, Designers and Crafters for your gift-giving needs all throughout the year. Thank you!~Cindy, EarthMotherMosaics

It's Magical Monday

 Throughout the year I often find times when the magic of mosaic making is exhausting. There are so many projects rolling around in my head that I have to write things down, put what I see together in some way to work on or often just gather enough of the supplies in one place to remember what I wanted to create.

This month was busy in that way but not much was yielded from it. I found I needed a few supplies I didn't have, even with all I do have, one thing was missing. Pushing that one aside to start on a new something or other was what I ended up doing.

By the end of a few crazy weeks of doing that, I have to now organize the aftermath.

Sometimes, tossing everything I've used into one bin and sorting it all is the only way I can do it. Right now, this is where I am. I have a lot of small pieces to sort through. It should take about a week to get through it all but I'll get there.

Meanwhile, I have some wood slices waiting for grout, a microwave plate waiting for some new glass so it can be made and there's a few switch plate covers, also small MDF wall hangings to make as well as a framed glass-on-plexiglass hanging.

 

I can't guarantee any of it will look like what you see here but I can say for certain it will all get made. Sometimes I use photos as guides, other times I draw a design to guide me and then there are times when the muse guides me and I just go for it.

Meanwhile, there's still time, but just enough, to order something from my shop on GoImagine. I've noticed a decline in delivery times as the year gets busier through the post office especially and I'm going to suggest, if you want something, to send me a message any place you've seen this announcement and we'll see if it can get to you before the holidays in December. My preferred shipping service is UPS but they too are a bit overwhelmed. It happens ...

Stay tuned! I'll share as I go, any and all progress.

Enjoy the journey.

 Cindy aka EarthMotherMosaics

 

Support Independent Artisans, Designers and Crafters for your gift-giving needs all throughout the year. Thank you!~Cindy, EarthMotherMosaics

It's been a while ...

I've been attempting to go back to things I like to do as I get more settled into the end of the year routines. As winter is just a finger snap away, I'll be even more involved in creating art and wanting to share it wherever I can.

This poor blog has been neglected for too long. It's time to dust off the cobwebs and try to bring it to the present moment in time.

I have a new online shop that I'm very proud of. This site is amazing and I highly recommend you go take a look around. Their mission is to support artists such as myself and give us a platform that is affordable. Not only that but their proceeds go to children's charities. Read their Mission Statement and you'll understand why I joined them.

 GoImagine

 

I've been making quite a bit of art these days. Not just mosaics but doodles as well as starting to experiment with water color painting. There's so much to share and so much to catch you all up on, but what I'll try to do is keep posting as often as I can and share as often as I can. Maybe we will catch up at some point!

Here's a few photos of some of my recent creations.

Flower Doodle created 11/18/2023

Celestial Wall from my room

Chakra Vibes (1 of 3 I've created)

Dot painted ornaments and mosaic ornaments on wood slices

Please take a minute to go to my shop and look around. The link is next to the posts or you can click here: SHOP

Enjoy your week and have a Happy Thanksgiving if you're within the US. Stay safe and warm and peaceful. And above all else ... enjoy the journey!

Cindy aka EarthMotherMosaics

 

Support Independent Artisans, Designers and Crafters for your gift-giving needs all throughout the year. Thank you!~Cindy, EarthMotherMosaics

Friday - Experiment Gone Right!

I wasn't planning on posting just yet here but I recently did an experiment with leftover grout from yesterday and felt it would be good for me to keep these photos all together in a blog post. So here we are. :)

I wanted to also share the grout color I did using white grout and Tints All colorant on the mosaic.

Here's the finished piece.

6 inches, top is navy blue stained glass, upper center is iridescent odd cuts of Lapis (love this stuff!!), lower center is light blue iridescent stained glass and the bottom is silver mirror. This will go into the Etsy shop, which is opening on my birthday, September 22nd. It's also the first day of autumn. As usual, I like to take my shop through the equinox cycles and the changing seasons. This is no different. Happily, I'm just about ready to open it once more.

When I was ready to grout, I picked out my tint color, cobalt blue, and added it to the white grout with a light squeeze and got this.

It isn't as dark and concentrated as cobalt blue actually is, but I loved the lighter color to it because I felt it blended well with the glass I used. This is how it actually looks before adding it to the grout. So pretty and I believe with lighter colored glass, it would look amazing this dark.

I painted the back using burnt umber, also by Tints All, and added it to some good old vegetable oil in a spray.

Now onto the experiment. I had some leftover grout available. I often do. Normally I wait to do 2-3 or more mosaics and then have a grouting session but I wanted to see this crescent moon mosaic from start to finish now, so I went ahead and grouted. When I've had leftover and no other mosaics to grout, I sadly toss it, even though I know there were things I could do, have done in the past, but didn't have the right things or didn't have space to put them to dry. This is no longer the case. I LOVE my garage art studio!!

I took a small plastic ice cube tray that I'm not using and sprayed it with vegetable oil and plopped the left over grout into them.

This morning I went in to see how they were doing assuming they were probably good. They plopped right out, in one piece!

Now when I did this kind of thing before, I had some acrylic paints and did some designs on them using toothpicks and a thin paint brush.

There really is nothing more exciting than creative juices flowing for an artist. Honestly, it's the best feeling when the muse is awake and ready to play.

There's a good chance I might paint some, I might mosaic some. Maybe I'll add them to mosaics. The moon face was part of a silicone mold I had years ago. Long gone now but here's the moon's face ... smiling at me after all these years. It might be time to use him now. Shown below is my piece entitled "Expect Miracles" where I used a plastic thing that held a bottle of perfume in its box. We save everything around here! I'm so glad we do.

This weekend I plan on spending a lot of time in the Purple Palace Art Space and creating more small 6 inch shapes. I'm going slowly, building up to a few intense pieces I want to do. I'll share more in another blog post soon.

Enjoy the journey!

 

 

Support Independent Artisans, Designers and Crafters for your gift-giving needs all throughout the year. Thank you!~Cindy, EarthMotherMosaics

Switching Gears Due to Excessive Heat!

The most interesting thing about working in an unfamiliar space is learning it's nuances and how to navigate around it. Heat and no doubt, cold, will play a big part in working in the garage art studio. Whenever possible, during the heat, we've been opening the garage door, giving me a cross breeze and allowing extra light in (love that!). When it's cold, I might have to use a heater to keep me warm while working, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

I promised a few in-progress shots of the garage after my grandson put the bottles up on the very top of the cabinets. Here are a few photos to show how it was going before I had to stop working in the garage due to heat.

 

I love how the bottles are placed up there, labels out, so I can see them from a distance.

 The rug the old lady cat tried to destroy is fine and living here. It helps with catching glass pieces really well.

 A decent sized container holds odds and ends, bits and pieces of mostly WediBoard.

 More decor for the top of the cabinets by the dish collection.

 This is the mixed media cabinet that I showed last time much more organized by using old bowls and containers.

And here is the grouting station, ready for the next go-round of mosaic magic!

Since we've had a bit of "weather" and the temperatures are way too high to do much in it, I've been focusing on taking photos of the mosaics I'll be putting back into Etsy when it reopens in September. This can be done from my room using the light from the window and the coolness from the central air. Ahhh.

Here are a few edited photos of a few favorite mosaics, showing the lighting and how well mosaics hold up over time. Even being jostled around during the move plus climate changes now that they live in the garage art studio, they are protected and should not show any damage.

Using a white MDF shelf, I get some great shots. Hanging things on the wall gives me some good shots as well.

 

 There you have it! Some glam shots of mosaics headed back into the shop very soon!

 

 

 

Support Independent Artisans, Designers and Crafters for your gift-giving needs all throughout the year. Thank you!~Cindy, EarthMotherMosaics

Garage Art Studio - Progress

The progress in the garage art studio is slow but steady. I've washed all the dusty, mouse icky dishes for mosaics thanks to the fancy kitchen automatic dishwasher and my own two little hands.

I drew this design a long time ago and was happy to see, even after going through the cycle in the washer it stayed put.

Too delicate for the dishwasher, these got washed by hand.

Using old table runners and doilies, I put the dishes on them to keep the bottoms from possibly getting greasy from the people before me who used this space. Eventually I'll be painting all the counters, perhaps the cabinets will get a mosaic or two and paint as well.

Slowly putting things up and out of the way but within reach.

The cabinets with the yellow bowl shown will have more bowls in there holding all those little bags of stuff and things such as polymer clay and whatnots. The photo above of the things to be washed, holds the bowls that will go into the cabinets and filled.

Top photo shows the grouting station, middle shows the stained glass (gotta get going on sorting by color again!) and the last photo is where I'll actually be working once the rest of what's out is in the cabinets or along the furthest right side of this counter.

This is one of those plates I will not smash or use in a mosaic. I love it. It's hanging in my room.

Also in my room is a desk that took me 6 hours to build. I'm tired ...

The rug on the wall is due to a very old kitty who may be leaving me sooner than I'd like her to. However, she was using all the new rugs as her litter box, so I removed them, washed them and hung up two, put one on top of the blanket chest and took the rope rug into the garage which will be used to wipe glass and dust off the shoes before I come into the house.

 This is Baby. We think she's about 18-19 years old. Very frail but still eating, drinking water and using her litter box. Here, she has a little food on her nose. Aww.

This shows where the other rug was placed.

Here's the blanket chest with the rug on it as well as The Tower of Now. I like it there and it's safe from the kitty because she can no longer jump.

My grandson is going to help get bottles and a few other cool things all the way up onto the cabinets. I tried to do it myself and almost fell off the sturdy step stool because I still had to go up on tiptoe to reach the area. He's a little taller than I am, lighter as well so if he has to climb onto the counters he can do that as long as he has a few spotters. I'll share photos of that next time.

 

 

Support Independent Artisans, Designers and Crafters for your gift-giving needs all throughout the year. Thank you!~Cindy, EarthMotherMosaics