Friday, August 28, 2009

Finished Mosaic #3!

It took me awhile, but I finally decided on which mosaic to use for the framed picture. It had some of the same colors as the rest of the mosaic and isn't so detailed that it distracts from the action on these pages. What's great is I'm keeping the mosaics on mesh until I'm done with all of them and every once in awhile I'll peek at them again and see little things I'd like to change, and I am still able to do it. So I can refine them as I go along! I printed out a photo of "Brown Kitty" and glued it to a piece of clear glass. Then I put a second piece of clear glass over it and "taped" the edges with Deco Tape so that the grout would not seep through later. I did this once before with a wedding invitation and it worked great!

This mosaic took me 70 hours and like the others, is 15x24". It took me 23 days straight, some days I worked only one hour, others I worked 6 or 8 hours, but it all averaged out to about 3 hours a day. Hmm... I think I need to do better than that!

Mosaic #4 is going to be chaaaaaaallenging!! But first, the mosaics for my dentist! I'm actually looking forward to a little break and doing something a little more simple and smaller!

Monday, August 24, 2009

Nearly done with mosaic #3!

I should be finished with it today or tomorrow. Here's a picture of some of the progress. I was going to make a jewelry box next to the vase but decided to go with something personal, which is a bowl that my son painted for me for my birthday when he was five. The characters in the book will closely resemble me and my family, so the items in the house will, too! I will put a picture of one of my older mosaics in the frame above the bowl and vase. Haven't decided yet which one, but when I am close to done, I will know what works best. I want to do that throughout the book - mosaics within a mosaic! Oh, looking at the photo, I think I need to re-work the inside of the bowl...

After this mosaic I will take a break to complete a commission for my dentist (trees). Though I am waiting for a glass order to start them and if it doesn't arrive soon, I guess I'll have to start the fourth mosaic for the book! Oh well.... :-)

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Mosaic #2 is done and onto #3

Mosaic #2 went pretty good! I'm really happy with it. Took me 60 hours exactly (my goal) and only 16 days. I will be done with the book by next May if I keep this up!!


The design for number three was another challenge for me. I had more perspective issues and many other problems with the composition that stretched the designing time out to 18 hours! (compared to 10 or 11 for the other two). I’m working on mesh and will not grout the mosaics until they are all finished so that I can make last minute changes if I need to.


This mosaic features my husband and our cat, Raymi, both of whom had to pose so I could take photos of them and use them as reference! Hopefully I can make the mosaic look enough like Greg – I haven’t done too many mosaics of people yet, and none of them were men. Here’s what I’ve done so far of Raymi.