I went to the thrift store this morning and picked up a few old dishes for breaking up and using in my mosaic work.
I also took some time today to walk through the garden.   My akebia is in bloom, also known as chocolate vine.  Had I known it was so highly invasive and undesirable, I […]

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I went out this morning and caught this gnome asleep under a birdbath in my garden.  Should I wake him up?

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Well, I call her a doll, she’s really  just a girl. 

Isn’t she cute in her coat and hat?
Lynn

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You should always wear safety glasses for protecting your eyes when working with mosaics or tiles or any project, for that matter.
Here are the glasses I use.  I also have some that completely touch my face and fit over snugly over the bridge of my nose for when I am working with glass that is […]

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You will notice that my workbench has slats across the top which leave space for pieces to fall through.  I do NOT want glass and tile shards all over the place, so I use an old, large metal tray to actually cut my tile over.  This makes it easy to sweep any shards into the […]

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One of my favorite tools is the potting bench or workbench that I made.  Here is a link to how this was done.
 http://www.thehealthyhomeschool.com/pottingbench.html

More in the next post…

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So far I have posted about the design process and some of the tools I use to make a mosaic birdbath.  Here is a photo of all the tesserae put in place with mortar.

It will have to dry for at least 24 hours before I carefully begin my work on the outside of the birdbath. 

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In order to place the tile pieces onto the base you are working on, you can either spread the mortar or adhesive all over the area you are working on, or you can “butter” the back of each individual piece.  Buttering has been my preferred method for most of the birdbath work I have done.

You can see […]

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For all of my projects outside, I use a thinset, or a cement-based mortar.  I mix it to a consistency of a soft oatmeal.  Not runny, but not so thick that it won’t drip off of the plastic picnic knife that I use to work with. 

You can mix in PVA (a white glue) to make the […]

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I did not plan to use green, but the idea to place the turtle on a blue “path” while looking at a green “path” came to mind.  Here is the base with all the  tesserae in position, but not yet affixed to the base.

The hardest part will be to attach the larger, outlying pink pieces and […]

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