Happy New Year!

It's been a wonderful year filled with mosaic and crafty joy for my business. For me personally I've had a few bumps but steadily moving towards my own goals has made me aware of how blessed I truly am to have a craft I believe in and enjoy so very much.

Work-in-progress - upcycled mosaic bowl waiting for grout

Thank you all for helping me through the highs and lows this year. I'm looking forward to a wonderfully exciting year in 2014.

As a special thank you, starting now: I'm offering new coupon codes each month for my shop on Etsy, EarthMotherMosaics. Use JAN10 to get 10% off any order for the entire month of January.

Happy New Year from EarthMotherMosaics!!

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

Stay peaceful,

Cindy of Earth Mother Mosaics and
Cindy White Photo Art

In The Studio

Busy with gifts but having a blast making them! I love to make mosaics. The more I make, the more I love it.

Everything requires grout now. I'm fairly sure I've shared some of these things here before, but I'm doing it again in case they were missed earlier.

First up are the crosses I've done. Not all are gifts. Some will get listed on Etsy.

And there's the owl that will get listed.

Some gifts my grandson made.

Some pendants for a few tweens and a little one.

The birthday gift for my son-in-law who has to share Christmas with his special day.

A wine bottle (can't wait to make another one of these!) using the way I dot paint as inspiration.

An elephant for my grandson.

A little ATC sized mosaic that combines dot painting and mosaic (first attempt). I want to make a few more of these and abandon them here and there and every where. They will be magnets when finished.

"Wedding Day"

A Day of the Dead Skull for my grandson's Aunt and Uncle.

And last, the only one that is grouted and ready to gift, the TARDIS.

There's one gift that will be late this year only because I needed to wait for a sale in order to get the materials needed. I'll share that when it arrives (which could be in 3-6 weeks).

Next Wednesday I'll share all gifts grouted! It's gonna be a messy week. But fun!! :)

I can also now share the 2 photos of the gifted items I made for the kind folks who donated money towards the fund raiser to get this new computer I'm using. Many thanks and lots and lots of love go out to each and every one of you who donated.

vase

magnet

Support Independent Artisans, Designers and Crafters this holiday season and all year long. Thank you!

Stay peaceful,

Cindy of Earth Mother Mosaics and
Cindy White Photo Art

In The Studio

Most of what is being worked on the studio this week is being done in the "Super Secret Mosaic Lab".

Shhhhhh ...

But the good news is as I've said before, I'm fairly sure very few of the people who are getting the gifts I'm making read my blog. That means I can share work-in-progress photos here. Yay!

The TARDIS is just about ready to be painted on the back and a little glue needs to get cleaned off the front. I'm happy with it.

TARDIS

Gluing the paper onto the mosaic worked perfectly. It's not easy to get a good photo of this one for some reason, but here it is below all grouted and hanging up.

I finished up the wine bottle for my grandson's Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop. It's almost ready for grout!

I think it's pretty cool. I would love to make more like this.

Yesterday I was in a little bit too much pain to do much work thanks to the cooler temps in our area and my 59 year old arthritic bones. I still worked on a "just because" mosaic to use up some nipped pieces of glass and mirror. I think this owl is very festive looking!

On the list next is making quick gifts for my grandson's teachers and his bus driver. Mosaic key chains are easy to make and he will help me make them, which is always fun for us both!

Support Independent Artisans, Designers and Crafters this holiday season and all year long. Thank you!

Stay peaceful,

Cindy of Earth Mother Mosaics and
Cindy White Photo Art

The Auction is Here!

Tonight, at tophatter.com, the auction for Earth Mother Mosaics begins at 7 PM EST! Stop by, bid, have some fun. They pace it quickly and don't give a lot of time in between items, so if you see something you want to bid on, jump on it! I'm happy to see that 86 people have RSVP'd on the site so far. For my first time ever to do an auction with this site, I think that's pretty good! And as I always say, every sale is a wonderful thing, which means one sale generated from this auction would be a cause for celebration! Woo-hoo!

Here's the one mosaic that folks have looked at the most:

The bidding starts at $40. I'll be hanging out an hour before the auction starts to answer any questions. Hope to see you there!

I had a long day yesterday, spending 8.5 hours on promotion so today I am focusing on my mosaics and giving myself a bit of a break from the computer stuff.

After dinner and all the marketing/networking/promoting was through for the day, I worked on the 2 crosses. Each is almost entirely ready for grout; there's just a few sides that need tiles. That is the slowest part of these, waiting for glue to dry on the sides so I can turn them.

#4 and #5

#4 - still adding glass tiles to the sides

#5 - almost ready for grout

I've been thinking about working on a glass-on-glass discarded microwave plate for a while. My cousin, bless her heart, gave me a square microwave plate not so long ago. She knows I use them for my art and I love that others think of me as a mini-recycling center! I've never put stained glass on a square one before and I'm way excited to get started. I've been studying my photos and some from my favorite inspirational sites and came up with a collage. I'm sharing it here now because I'm not positive you'll know what it is once I'm finished! I may go more abstract with it which is always a possibility when I create.

This is just a small section, but gives the idea. I printed out a few pages and cut and taped them together. Then taped it to the backside of the plate. This way, I can use it as a template through the glass. I do this technique with most every plate I do if I have a pattern in mind. The marker outlines are a guide to help keep me on track. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't!

It may get put aside a few times or go a completely different way, but it is next in the pile to work on, giving myself a break from crosses and other MDF shapes. I think it might be too ambitious for me but we'll see how it goes. I'm sure I'll share photos of progress and changes as I have them. I expect I might. Wish me luck!

Stay peaceful,

Cindy, Earth Mother Mosaics

Yesterday I shared a coffee lid I use to put paint on when I do my dot paintings and discovered a cool little piece of art by accident on it.

Last night I painted a little scene on it and here's what it looks like now.

To me, it looks like a black cat and his shadow (with his back to us), staring at the clouds. I have NO idea what to do with it now, but obviously I can't use it to hold globs of paint any longer. I think I'll attempt to poke a hole in the top and put a piece of ribbon through it to hang it up.

I've been doing a lot of prep work getting ready for the next wave of mosaics. There's not much to share yet but I did make a sale last night that made me extremely happy. All sales make me smile, for sure, but this one was especially rewarding. I love to work on discarded items, as you may know, like empty beer and wine bottles but I also like to put mosaics on discarded microwave plates. I sold one of those and am so pleased! Not just because I made a sale (yay!) but because not only did we save something from the landfill, I added my mosaic touch to it and someone will now enjoy it in a new way. No longer useful as it was, it still has purpose in its new life. This pleases me very much. I'm feeling so grateful this day, happy that others see the beauty as I do. It's a very humbling experience.

I have gotten a little further along on the dot painting. I believe I'm going to have to figure out names for my bottles; each one is unique and should have a unique name besides painted bottle #3. Since I wasn't sure I was going to make more than one when I first started out with these, now that I'm into the 6th one, I believe I can giving them names. Now I just have to figure out what they want to be called.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Stay peaceful.

Cindy, Earth Mother Mosaics

It's HOT here in PA. I normally fuss very little compared to others about weather, it is what it is and there's nothing to do but find ways to stay cool and comfy. I wasn't prepared for the large jump in temps however, because this time last week we were living with rain and 60 degrees temps. Today it is not quite noon and close to 90 degrees. Whew. Add that to the fact that I am 58 years old and more bothered by weather changes than I used to be when I was 28. Bah-humbug.

I managed to walk to the local dollar store and found square 3 inch glass candle holders! I only had one left in a green stained glass available so I grabbed 3 more to mosaic. They are hard to find in the local dollar store and often I have to travel further to find them. So, that was kind of exciting. Then I went to the local grocery store and found my favorite coffee, normally at $6 for $3. Woo-hoo! Top it off with a bottle of red and a bottle of white in my favorite wines and that was my perfect morning. Walking home with heavy bottles and glass containers wasn't as much fun but I managed it.

I worked a bit more on the bottle last night and found some wooden napkin rings I purchased forever ago that I am going to dot up soon!

Check it out: the coffee lid sitting by the toothpicks has a black cat on it! That was purely accidental, but I may have to use another lid now because I like finding art in unexpected places. I'm painting the background and will share a photo when it's finished.

Speaking of finding art, I now have a printer (yay) and can print out Art Abandonment tags to go with the few things I want to drop off here and there. I am hoping to do that next week when the temps drop to the mid 70's. It will also give me time to make up a few more pieces to abandon. I'll share photos when I have them all gathered up, which means it may take more than a week, come to think of it ... the photos haven't been all that great lately.

I added 2 more items to Gently Loved Treasures this morning. These photos were taken months ago!

Vintage Salt and Pepper Shakers: Pink Seashells, Florida, Flamingos

Vintage Pepper Shaker: Single Shaker, Penguin

I've been photo editing a few items each day and getting them set up to list for the next day. Eventually I'll have no more to share until more photos are taken but hopefully by then, the Camera Goddess will return to me.

I made a treasury on Etsy this morning that I really love. If you have a chance, hop on over and give it some love (click on the link below the photo), favorite the items in it and share it if you'd like. I'm discovering I have a certain color preference when I make treasuries. I made quite a few last week, one for each team I belong to! It has been quite a long time since I've done that.

Peaceful Morning

Meanwhile, I have dots to make, stained glass and dish shards to glue to stuff and things and finally things to sort and gather together. And I'm having the time of my life!!

Stay peaceful.

Cindy, Earth Mother Mosaics