This was another year for playing with an alternative to a tree. Instead we set up this lovely duo of Bird cages, filled them with lights, set them off with a few beads and let the birds free to sit on top. Looks lovely and bright in the early evenings. And with that we send our wishes too.
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In the midst of getting ready for the holiday, I couldn’t resist playing with some stained glass shards in various shades of greens and reds. We decided to use it for the splash page to our website, to set a colourful tone….
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Today, another stained glass scrap composition….up close, from the side, in the sun. Love seeing the edges of the glass. Cool eh?
I’ve been enjoying this view for quite some time in our kitchen window while having my breakfast. Love the light bouncing through the colorful and textural glass. Ok, I do have a weakness for lots of color. And this is even better, it’s glowing colour!
I call it “Floating Black”, my attempt at a descriptive title. We took this one and did a bit of transforming magic in Photoshop. And now we have it flattened into a composition of colorful shards on a white background.
Makes a lovely print in our shop on Society6. Just click on the pic to go to our shop.
And if you look through our shop on Society6, you’ll find it as an iphone case too.
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You just never know where a few scraps of stained glass will lead to…
I’m one of those people who never throws much out. As artists, we can see potential in old chipped dishes, old furniture, old scraps of paper and magazines, and even old scraps of stained glass. Back in 2010, I’d been given lots of small stained glass scraps by someone who was cleaning out “junk”. Well, as it’s often said, one persons junk is another persons treasure. My friends know me well, and later that year, I got a couple of boxes of stained glass scraps for my birthday and I did make some mosaics with these scraps.
And then, everything sort of sat around for a bit. But I did happen to have an old illuminated sign box that I use as light table. Now the thing about colored glass, what really excites me, is what happens to all that color when light shines through it.
So a few years ago I started to have some fun applying shards of glass to glass, first old windows then those glass frames you used to be able to find where you have to sandwich the picture between two sheets of very thin glass. Now, I wasn’t interested in creating the usual stained glass where you surround the piece with leading, because what really interested me was the layering of color in the light. And I got a bit frustrated gluing glass on glass until either Will or my son Dave, walked by and said, “Well, why don’t you just glue glass to both sides of the glass?” Well, duh. And that is how I got onto gluing glass on both sides of the glass.
Also, I wasn’t interested in creating pictures with glass. What I played with was just using the scraps as they were and creating abstracts with them. Which turned out, at least to me, rather well. I loved the look and the windows have been sitting on windowsills in the house ever since I made them. Here’s another view of the glass piece at the top of the post.
Now the beauty of having a mind that’s open to possibilities is that you never know where you will end up next.
I’ve always wanted to do more with those compositions, and I looked at light boxes and all sorts of things for a while and then just sort of forgot about it all. Then a few weeks ago I was looking at prints, and print files and looking around for what I could convert into prints. And in one of those “ah hah“ moments my eye lit on the stained glass comps in the windows of the kitchen. So, together with Will, who is more of a master of photoshop than I, I played around with it and found that the glass transformed really well into abstract compositions on paper. Which we immediately ran through our new printer and loved the result.
We do have some print on demand shops, one being our shop on Society6. So today, I’m happy to show the first of these new Stained Glass Prints,
already converted into a few fun home decor products, one a pillow, and much more to come yet. Just click on the pics to go to Society 6.
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This very beautiful mosaic is the work of my Student Dianne. As the title of this post suggests, it’s the result of a couple of lucky finds; a lovely pewter dish and a dish sporting a fish.
In my mosaic classes, I teach a type of mosaic called Pique Assiette, which is making mosaics with broken dishes. On the first class, after I’ve totally overwhelmed someone ( in a good way of course ) with all the mosaic possibilities, given them a very brief taste of how dishes break, and what to look for, we set off to Thrift stores to shop. And that’s when the fun begins. First, it’s all about looking for dishes and colors that spark something for you. Then second, it’s all about luck and finding something that makes it all happen. Dianne was very lucky. On the shopping class she found the very unusual pewter dish. The design on the edge was fantastic and we both agreed that the dish itself would make a great place for a mosaic. Then, during the week, she was lucky again and snapped up a dish with a crackle design surrounding a fish.
The first class was a time of trying out all sorts of ideas. From creating a totally abstract design, without the fish and then finding a way to incorporate the fish at the edge of the plate and working all the other colors and textures around it.
A lot of designing is just about trying things out. Laying out pieces and looking and wondering. You have to follow your instinct. And sometimes, I’ve even taken up pieces I’ve glued down and started over. When Dianne returned the following week, the first thing she said was that she was glad I’d told her about removing pieces and starting over even after gluing them down. Because she’d done a lot of that. I could totally understand her progress since it is much like mine. I’m slow and thoughtful and I just keep rearranging until it “feels” right. So it was great to have a student who gets that idea. And as you can see, all that rearranging and listening to whether it “felt” right had a wonderful result.
The last week, we grouted and again were lucky as I’d just tested a grout called silver and it was perfect to pull together the silver of the dish with the mosaic itself. Here it is ungrouted.
And here is a pretty happy Dianne with her lovely mosaic…
I happen to know that Dianne is already planning another mosaic and I can’t wait to see what she does next.
(BTW if you’d like to comment, and we do appreciate comments, please just click on the title to bring up the post with a spot for comments at the bottom.)
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Lately all you hear is declutter, declutter, throw out, lighten your load, etc, ad nauseam. Recently, I even saw a book that claimed your health would improve by throwing things out. It’s the latest trend.
Well, I happen to be one of those people who hardly ever throws things away. You may think you are throwing something out but it has to go somewhere, like the garbage dump, if it can’t be recycled. As they say, there really is no “away”. We do, however, recycle a lot. In fact, we hardly ever have any garbage for the garbage people to pick up.
I make Pique Assiette mosaics, which means, creating mosaic surfaces from broken dishes. So, essentially, I’ve been making art from all those dishes that others got rid of. I suppose I really should be thankful for all those people who donated all that “clutter” to thrift stores.
Over the years of making mosaics, I’ve accumulated quite a lot of leftover bits and pieces that didn’t make it into the latest mosaic. It’s not clutter. It’s all sorted by color and pattern and stored in recycled salad containers. As I say, there is a lot of it. I just can’t throw it all out. I always have a feeling that someday I might need a certain color or pattern. Of course, whenever I can, my students benefit from my stash of broken bits should they need some color or maybe a floral pattern to augment their pieces.
Which brings me to this latest little mosaic at the top of the post. Looking at all my lovely stash of bits and pieces, I’ve decided to start creating small mosaics. This one is just 6 inches by 6 inches. For the time being I’m planning to make little studies, putting together all those small and precious bits I’ve been saving. It’ll be a nice change from the larger projects I’ve done before. Who knows where it will end? Or how many I’ll make or if maybe I’ll have a show of small mosaics somewhere or maybe post them on our Etsy shop.
This little mosaic, with it’s floral design, will be a gift for a niece’s wedding. Something small and I hope, precious, that she can enjoy in her new home.
(BTW if you’d like to comment, and we do appreciate comments, please just click on the title to bring up the post with a spot for comments at the bottom.)
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I do have sort of a weakness for the black and white stripes. I like to add just touch of stripes here and there, in a lot of artworks. They just jazz up a pattern or surface. We make a type of mosaic called Pique Assiette, made with broken dishes. So you can imagine how excited I got on spying a whole stack of dishes with black and white stripes in the thrift store. But, believe it or not, I actually left them behind, on the shelf, when on a dish buying trip with mosaic students.
In the end, of course, I just couldn’t resist. I did get exceptionally lucky when I went back on the seniors discount day and found them still there and promptly snapped them up and also got 30% off! Always nice to get a discount, you know.
So now I had this huge stash of black and white stripes to work with. It occurred to me that instead of using them for just an accent here and there, that I could go mad and also have some fun experimenting with using way too many black and white stripes, just to see what would happen…. especially with a few other dishes to take it right over the top! That’s me, just an artistic rebel, ha, ha.
I’d started with just the stripes, the black and white with a “river” of colorful stripes and it just needed something. Which was when I noticed I did just happen to have a few of these bits of cups with black and white bulls eye on them.
Finally, almost done with the tedious breaking, gluing and fitting. You’ll have to excuse the glue everywhere. There’s just no way to avoid that messy gluey stage.
And now a new decision to make. What color grout? And here Will came to the rescue, by Photoshopping a few choices.
Since I was already over the top, I did consider really colorful grout. Then black too, but I decided that the uneven black paired with the very straight black on the dishes just wouldn’t work. In the end, I came to the conclusion that the pale grey set off all the pieces and that I really couldn’t/shouldn’t push the composition any more than I already had.
Here it is again, Finished!
And a side view too.
I’m quite happy with it, oddly. I know it’s over the top, too much pattern, eye popping, on the verge of looking like camouflage, but it has a nice sense of fun to it. The size, by the way, is 8 in x 8 in. Still haven’t come up with a title….
Oh, Will just came up with a perfect title…..”One, Two, Many”
(BTW if you’d like to comment, and we do like comments, please just click on the title to bring up the post with a spot for comments at the bottom.)
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Ah, Before and After. This is the story of an old hide-a-bed couch being replaced with an up-cycled Daybed very thriftily made and done up in Boho style.
The old couch, with its unbleached cotton cover hiding stains, old age, many, many years of wear, not to mention large shreddy bits made by long gone cats, just had to go! It just so happened that we had most of the components for a new daybed, stored in the basement, waiting to be transformed. Something much more comfy and better looking than a lumpy, old hide-a-bed. We’d just been waiting for a little time to tackle it.
First, had to get the old couch hauled away by a company that would make sure it all got recycled. We had the rails of an old Ikea single bed, missing the slats. Not sure, but I think they may have been used for some other project. We had a couple of substantial wooden chair or couch arms that one of our sons had found years ago and brought home.
We had saved the two foam seat cushions from the old couch to make new back cushions from. We cut those in half with an old electric carving knife and made four cushions from them.
Will, in the mean time had ingeniously figured out a way to attach the arms of the chair to the rails of the bed. And like so many people these days…. he recycled some pallets into slats for the bed. The only new thing we ended up getting was the actual foam mattress. An Eco foam mattress, so no off-gassing etc.
The aforementioned unbleached cotton cover was sewn into “new” covers for the foam. And the material from a thrift shop duvet cover became new covers for the cushions.
And finally, a chance to get creative with all my fabric stash, collected from garage sales and thrift shops. Chaos while deciding on the fabrics I’d use.
Lovely new pillows, in the Boho Style.
Love how the fabric looks with an iris.
And tah dah! New daybed! We love it! Finally a place for napping where you can actually stretch right out and really relax. Makes a nice couch too.
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We’re a couple of artists who are always open to new ideas, new avenues even. In the last few years we’ve been exploring some new ways of selling our work online. We’ve got lots of work up in some Print on Demand Online shops like our Summerhouse Art on Society 6, Summerhouse art on Zazzle and Red Bubble. It’s been a bit of learning curve but lots of fun too.
Which brings me to our latest venture….FoundMadeArt
So, a little lead in…. We’ve always been in love with beach combing. I’m one for watching tide charts and finding just the right day to head out to Sidney to look for beach pottery and beach glass.
And we’ve made a few things like Bird baths
and mirror frames with it.
One day Will started playing with the idea of making jewelry from driftwood and beach glass. Off he went researching and learning everything he could about wire wrapping online and at the library. Honestly, there is nothing that hasn’t got a tutorial about it somewhere. We love that generosity. And with his natural sense of design he was soon creating some really lovely necklaces.
Which brought us to where to sell it all? He’d made quite a few. So we looked into Etsy. This time though, we couldn’t use our usual name of Summerhouseart since it had already been used in one form or another. But Will soon came up with the perfect new name. So, drum roll…… our new shop is called FoundMadeArt.
I love the new name since its all about finding things, like beach glass and driftwood and making something artful with it. And it leaves a lot of scope for other things that we like to work in too, like collage, assemblage and mosaics. The plan is to start with jewelry now and add a variety of other “found art” as we go along.
Here is a little introduction to what he’s been creating lately. We like to think of it as Surfer, beach jewelry. You can just link to the Etsy shop by touching the pic. BTW, you may notice in the photo of us, we look kinda young. But never mind, we decided to use it anyway since that’s how we still feel as long as we stay away from mirrors. Young at heart, that’s us.
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The first class in my mosaic classes is all about possibilities. First, I like to show students as many possibilities of what they can do with broken dishes as I can. I give them a tour of all my mosaics, then I show them lots of books of mosaics and for about 10 minutes I give them a taste of actually breaking dishes in my studio with my two wheel cutters. And then …. we go Shopping at Thrift stores for dishes to break! Everyone’s favourite part!
Some students are overwhelmed with all the possibilities and some just get even more excited to start. Tanya was the latter. In fact, between the 1st class and the 2nd one, she made a couple of small mirrors on her own at home! For her project she chose to make a pretty good sized mirror, which was going to be bit of work. But Tanya, who has her own studio/gallery in the Yukon where she makes jewelry, is quite used to getting down to work. And that she did.
As you many have gathered, I teach Pique Assiette mosiacs, which is a type of mosaics made with broken dishes and I always encourage students, when we go shopping, to look for color and patterns they’re really attracted to. I’ve always found that you tend to actually use those dishes, and may ignore the ones that you don’t have quite the affinity for. Tanya chose a lot of blue dishes, in a variety of patterns and I threw in a little donation of one of my hoarded abstract plates to use too.
She had the mirror ready for grouting for the last class. This is us cleaning up the grout and glue from each piece of mosaic. And yes, that is an old toothbrush I’m using, works really well for this task.
We’d chosen a grout that would set off every piece. A little comparison here to show the finishing touch the grout makes.
One of the things Tanya wanted was to create a mirror that could be hung either horizontally or vertically as a diamond. And for that we devised a pretty balanced design so that it would look great either way.
Tanya had a far reaching plan too. She wanted to offer more than jewelry in her gallery. When she posted her little mirrors and her finished class mirror on her Facebook, she was already getting orders for more! And no wonder! I think she’s a natural at mosaic.
She’ll be heading back to the Yukon in the spring and has been busy finding more dishes to take back to her studio there to create more mosaics. She creates some lovely jewelry too at her gallery/studio Motherlode Jewellery.