Organizing the Purple Palace and Downsizing Mosaics Supplies

If things go the way I really hope they do, all of this time spent to get 1, 3 and 5 pound bags of dish pieces (all hand cut) cleaned and organized will be available in a new Etsy shop for a reasonable price. We’ve named them Mystery Boxes. I'll be using flat rate boxes and include that price in the final cost of each bag ordered.

As you can see, these aren't super fancy but GREAT for filling in areas, like these examples below:

I often use white dish pieces to fill in areas around stained glass

 

The background on this one has the bottom rims from cups, bowls and dishes. Nothing gets wasted that way and it gives the mosaic a bit of added interest.

And so, here's the plan ... clean all the dish pieces and weigh them, prepare for the onslaught of sales 😁😂 and reduce the amount of tesserae I have as well as maybe helping someone new to mosaics or someone who just needs a little bit of odds and ends for that background on a stepping stone (I don't have any to share of those but you can find great examples if you search) or flower pots.

Here's the beginning of 20+ years in mosaic making ... lots to gather and clean and maybe, just maybe, might take longer than I think to do it all but I can do a little and that's a great way to start!

YIKES!

This should be about 5 lbs here.

 

When the second shop with these awesome mosaic supplies is up, I'll share here. Meanwhile, feel free to contact me now if you'd like to discuss purchasing a pound or two of these Mystery Boxes.

Do something creative every day!

 

Enjoy the journey.

Cindy aka EarthMotherMosaics

https://artbyearthmothermosaics.com

 

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