In The Studio - Part Two

The week has proven to be a productive one. All the materials arrived for the custom ordered peace sign, so I set to work!

10 inch peace sign covered in bright and beautiful Fiestaware

The outer edge will get dish tiles on them very soon. Lovely black grout will be added to get it all finished up and beautiful. It's gonna POP with color! The customers, a high school classmate and his wife, are putting this in their kitchen. That's so awesome and I'm thrilled to work with yet another classmate! I've done custom work for 5 other classmates and they've all been a joy to work with.

I found a photo Wednesday evening while looking through a computer file that I thought would work for the #TBT (Throw Back Thursday) fun done on Facebook, etc. I thought some of you newer folks who follow the blog might find it of interest.

Here's what I posted on FB along with this photo: "I don't usually do the #TBT thing but I found something that would fit and thought I'd share. This photo was taken in 2010, probably in October or November. My first time teaching a class on basic/intermediate mosaics was at Keith Valley Middle School! Funny to look back on it and think I actually had confidence enough to do them. Not sure I could do them now. Shortly after providing basics/intermediate classes for a year and a half, someone I admire greatly told me I shouldn't teach anything without proper education myself and to stop. I am self-taught in all the art I do. I thought about it for a few months, doing classes in between, finding them harder to do, less people signing up, etc. I believed the person who told me to stop was right but felt maybe some day I could take a few classes myself and get the education part that this person felt I needed. That never happened and I lost my energy for sharing the love of the craft. As things worked out, stopping classes was the right move for me. So please no pity or sympathy --- the Universe is taking good care of me and I know it always will. I still believe I'll have a big room of my own, a warehouse kind of deal - locally would be awesome, with tons of tables all around, different mosaic goodies on the walls for everybody from 1 to 100 to come in and play. Classes could be given by those who had a proper education if they would like to give them but those of us who have a love for what we do enough to learn all we can (and I'm still learning!) and then share it with like minded peeps can do them too! Note to self: gotta get the sciatica and muscle spasm taken care of first so I can walk and move around better! In any case, here I am in this photo, longish hair, looking over my glasses talking about how to make a mosaic mirror (intermediate class) for the very first time. Awww - what a sweet memory!!"

On Father's Day, I talked to my 83 year old, Dad. Almost always he asks me if I've been busy; meaning paid artistic work. And almost always I am. He really loves my mosaics and told me I should be in high demand! What a great Dad, eh? However, he mentioned the portraits I've done in the past; only a few, and how much he loves those particularly. He suggested I share them often and let people know I can do one for them taken from a favorite photograph. Many do portraits and traditionally thinking, I can see why he'd want me to share what I do when I make a portrait because I use all kinds of tesserae and interesting bits and bobs in my mosaics. In honor of his pride in me, I gathered together the few mosaics I've done over the past 2 years that were taken from photos for people I care about.

Wedding Day - A Christmas gift - Capturing a moment in mosaic between my daughter and her new husband at their reception - 12/20/2013

Discovery - A Birthday gift for my daughter - Little Dude's first experience with the vastness of the ocean - 04/21/2014

Mark and Tara - A mosaic taken from computer generated characters my daughter made - A Christmas gift for them both - 12/24/2014

Sammy - A memorial mosaic plate for a family member - 01/10/2015

If anyone would like to have a mosaic portrait made like these shown above, contact me to discuss sizing, pricing, etc. They take approximately a month to complete from start to finish. These make an excellent gift. My Dad thinks so, anyway.

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

Stay peaceful,

Cindy

In The Studio - Part One

It's been a busy week so far. I love busy weeks!!

I got all the scrap glass on the custom ordered mosaic vase.

The next step for this beauty is to give it a preventative measure of watered down glue brushed onto it. Although I used MAC Glue to put the pieces of glass on the vase, I used a PVA white glue and water to do this treatment. This watered down glue treatment is so worth the time it takes to wait for the white glue to dry to clear. When using MAC it doesn't take quite as long as it would had I used white glue for the entire vase because the MAC stays dry (dries after a few hours from application). I just added this mixture with a brush and can already see how much grout bleed would have happened had I not done this (see photo below). It's still possible some grout will get through. I use small pieces and all uneven for my scrap glass mosaics. In any case, this step will help the grout from seeping in here and there behind the pieces. Worth the long wait of a week+ for the mixture to dry! The art of making mosaics is patience.

If you look closely you can see milky spots behind some of the pieces. That should, hopefully, be what prevents grout from seeping through those spots. This is not 100% fool proof. There is always the chance that the water from the grout can still bleed through in spots. But this prevents much of it and worth the time and patience it takes to wait for it to dry before grouting.

The memorial plate, "Sammy", was gifted. The new owner held it to her heart when she saw it. It made me very happy to see that reaction. It was what I hoped for.

I've been experimenting with something a little bit unusual. I read recently that someone used a cardboard box and created a mosaic on it. Once treated with the proper things, it became sturdy enough to sit on.

That got me thinking about what I have around me and what I could experiment on to give this theory a try.

I am a big cookie fan. When I was able to handle wheat, it was not uncommon for this Nana to always have cookies. Once I switched over to gluten free products, through trial and error, we found the best cookies I've ever had. Aleia's Love of Artisan Food cookies are the best I've ever had. EVER. Their packaging is quite nice too. The box they package these delicious cookies in is very well made and just basically cool.

I found my substrate! Taking some mesh, I covered up a few spots. And then covered it in plaster cast strips.

Once they were completely cured the box was fairly solid but still slightly flimsy. I decided to cover it in cement, as I normally do when using plaster.

The result is a really cool shape (a house!) to mosaic on. It is sturdy! I'll be working on covering this cool house for the next few days.

And now I'm eyeing all the cool shapes around me both in box form and plastic containers. Oh my goodness ... the possibilities!!

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

Stay peaceful,

Cindy