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

Garage Art Studio - My Lovely Mess!

The studio is a complete mess right now. It was fairly clean for about three days but then I started pulling out things from boxes and trying to decide where things should go within the cabinets. After some minor organizing, I know I have the most in mixed media and found object supplies. Next is stained glass and then dishes. Everything needs to be sorted through, placed within the cabinets. Sorting of glass and dish pieces has to be done again but that's last. Right now. I'm going through boxes, placing like with like as best as I can and deciding where it goes. Here, in photos, shows the process of cleaning off the counter space and then filling them up again.

This photo above is where I started. There was no organization, naturally, everything was just placed wherever it could go in order to find the important things for my room within the house. Keep this photo in mind as you see the changes.

My sturdy stool arrived and then I knew I could climb up to the cabinet area without much hassle. Almost reaching the top shelves. That's not a usual thing for me. I do have to go up on tiptoe in order to reach them well so I don't do that often.

I should mention that when the garage door is open on a sunny day, there is enough light to go without the task lighting for a bit. That's nice because I love natural light. And it's also nice because there's a breeze that comes from the open door through to the window on the side of the house.

As I moved and emptied boxes, I found the glass grinder, that has been in it's original box for over 10 years, still works. The under cabinet lights didn't stick on the dark cabinets; this garage was well loved by a man who built and fixed things. There's a lot of grease under those cabinets and the lights just wouldn't stay. So my solution was to put them on the bottom as you see them here on the dark set and under the cabinets on the newer lighter set using the funky spot lighting for close work when needed. It had a tripod but that fell apart as soon as I put it on so I cut some slits in a coffee can and plopped it into the can. It works great.

Nothing at this point is in the cabinets but the counter space is starting to show signs of eventual use. I'll work mostly where the lights and grinder are.

I started filling in the cabinets and putting things on top as well. I think I'll change my mind a few times but more or less the mixed media/found objects will be on the left along with the glue, moving over to where the substrates are in the center and through to the end mostly glass (bottles, vases, odds and ends) substrates.

Then I started figuring out exactly how I wanted things. I even drew a diagram but ended up with the general ideas on it and changing it slightly.

Now there is a huge mess again where all the mixed media/found objects are and will take at least a week to get that inside the cabinets in a way that is useful for me.

Wow ... lots of jewelry, half circles in glass, polymer clay pieces, shells, rocks, a big box of this and that. Corks, bottle caps, etc.

This photo above is holding the stained glass, dishes and the lower counter top will be my grouting station. The cabinets hold grouting supplies. Under the cabinets, I'm going to get shelving at some point to hold the cookie jars, Etsy mosaics (seen in the grey bin) and other things I've yet to figure out.

There you have it ... the tour of the crazy mess of a studio space so far that I already love! And I haven't even used it yet!!

 

 

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