Grouting is a mess

As you can see I have put the tile on the wood with a tile adhesive.  Now I mixed up some grout with water and applied it to the tile with a Popsicle stick.  As I was doing it a few of the small bits of china came out.  I'll repair that after I've finished grouting.  It's easy to reapply them.  After I was finished grouting I took the same Popsicle stick and scraped off what I could from the broken china and glass surfaces.  It's really a gloppy mess.  So you'll want to wear rubber gloves and not one of your new shirts like I stupidly did.  Duh.  Now I'm going to let it dry for several hours to clean the grouting and make it look tidy.

 Okay.  I let it dry and started the cleaning process.  This actually took me about 3 hours on and off.  When I had sponged it all off I found holes where the grout had not filled in.  So I had to regrout several times.  I enjoy this process because it's so fun to see how it's going to turn out. 

One important thing.  It's not a good idea to just pour the mucky grout water down the drain as it can clog it.  I always flush it down the toilet gradually.  When I worked at a dental lab they had a special trap under the sink that the plaster from the models could filter down to.  Since I don't have that I use the toilet and that works just fine.

Mosaic over the kitchen sink-Cooooool

This is a project that I've stewed about for quite a while.  Originally I was going to do a mosaic of Gerber daisies but I just couldn't make myself do it.  It just looked dumb and too normal.  I can't do that with mosaics.  My tendency now is to do more abstract things that have fun 3-D elements added on top. 

So I started over.  Actually I was seriously considering throwing out all my broken china and glass because it takes up a lot of room in my studio and it haunts me every time I go in there.  So I thought I'd at least do one more thing for now.  If I feel like I've had enough of mosaics after that I'll pitch it all.  I can always go back to the thrift store and buy more cheap. 

Back to the project.  I spent several hours last night in heaven working on the placement of this and listening to a very good book on cd.  My idea of a great evening.  Now I need to get my husband to cut me some wood to put this all onto.  I'm probably going to need some support bars on the back because this could be quite heavy when done. 

I'm so excited about this!  I think I'm going to do 3-D clear glass flowers on top.  Notice the 1 blue item?  That's a chunk of glass that broke in the shape of a heart.  I'm going to try to incorporate that on there somehow. 

Jet Blue fun!

 

              This is what we've been doing a lot lately since we get the free flights:  TRAVEL! 

Hot Cocoa-the rose that stays hot!

I was at Millcreek Gardens yesterday buying a miniature rose bush for a friend to honor her mother that had passed away.  I just could not resist getting this floribunda rose bush for us.  And by the way-if you don't know what a floribunda is then let me tell you.  It's a rose that has about 7 blooms on 1 stem instead of the tea rose that just has 1.  The tea rose is what you see in a bouquet.  I usually don't like floribundas as much for flower arrangements because they're more difficult to arrange but who cares when they're as gorgeous as this one.  Anyway, this prize winning variety is called "Hot Cocoa".  Hopefully you can see that it' a burnt orange in the middle and surrounding that is a mocha/orange/purplish color.  I read about them last night and people commented that they're very difficult to photograph and get the true color.  I had to play around on Photoshop because the initial photo was too bright and didn't show the brownish color.

Apparently this variety is very disease resistant and grows on it's own root ball.  Another thing I didn't know for years is that most rose bushes are really a lovely variety grafted onto a wilder rose root ball.  Why they do that, I don't know.  But I had a yellow rose (replaced by this yesterday) that had turned into junk the last 3 years at least.  For probably about 10 years it's was a beautiful producer and bugs and diseases didn't attack it at all but the wild rose took over and ruined it.  At that point you might as well just pull it out.  That's what the rose expert told me yesterday.  That's okay because I know I'll love "Hot Cocoa".  She said that I will really love this because they produce all summer even when it's very hot.  My kind of rose!  I have to bring them in the house all summer long and usually in the middle of summer I don't have much at all to do anything with.

By the way-the one I bought for my friend is called "Smoke Rings".  I really want to get that one also.  It's very similar to the other one and they would be so great in the same arrangement together.  For a miniature it's just delightful and that's next on the list along with...............  I may have to go get that today.

P. S.  Can you imagine how beautiful it would be to reproduce this color of rose with the glass mosaics like my rose in the middle of the last post's entry called "Scarlet"?  With the green rose leaves surrounding it?  Good thing I didn't toss all my mosaics covering my table in my studio.

Sometimes letting your art "stew" can be a good idea.....

Top:  "Scout" from "To Kill a Mockingbird"
Bottom:  "Scarlet" from "Gone with the Wind"

Do you remember these broken china/glass hearts from about 2 years ago?  Well in case you don't-they're from a series dedicated to famous literary heroines.

You know how something just doesn't do it for you sometimes?  Well, I just started messing around more with these 2 broken china/glass hearts and I like them a lot better now.  They just needed some pizzazz.  I liked them so much they're hanging on the wall now in a grouping.  They were for sell but not any more.

I forgot that I had a black and white outer border on "Scout"  before.  It think that just had to go.