Merry Christmas and Happy Artwork to All!

Happy Holidays! This lovely mosaic is made of bottlecaps (amazing I know!) and I created it using the steps outlined in a previous post.   If you take a step back, you can see how wonderful the mosaic really is.

The mosaic is a gift to my brother in law who has a thing for Our Lady of Guadalupe.  I tried a number of images, including the classic with the Virgin floating on a cloud surrounded by roses, but this version was so pretty it quickly became my favorite.

Some of you may be horrified of the idea of The Virgin Mary made out of bottlecaps, many of them beer caps, but to me this artwork is spot-on  perfect.  The idea that beauty can come from unexpected, and sometimes mundane, places is very appealing to me.  And then there is something perfectly New Mexico about artwork like this - spirituality from simplicity.

frontdoor mosaic

The installation


As mentioned in previous posts, the doorways of this house are pretty ugly.  In this case, the doorway between the sunroom and living room was a series of cement blocks, open end up, filled with concrete and rocks, with a few tips of rebar sticking up for good measure.  Not fun to walk on, and not the least bit attractive.  I could live with it except the whole thing is also a huge dirt magnet.  I decided to do a simple mosaic to cover the whole thing.

View to the living room

The mosaic is made of basic ceramic tiles from Home Despot; two colors terra cotta and grey.  The hinge end of the doorway is plain, whereas the open end has a sun motif.  The main background is offset bars, simple but still quite attractive.  The whole thing was made in IL as usual, then shipped to NM for the install.  The process is the same as usual: adhesvie, slap it down, wait for set, then grout. In case you're wondering, the grout does not go to the edge of the brick, there is a hairthin space to allow for differential expansion of the materials. 

The final mosaic is attractive, smooth, and oh so easy to clean! Much better than the original.  Once the bricks are cleaned after the (endless) construction, the colors of the tile and brick will be more similar.  Very nice effect.



The Ghost Dog in the Kitchen - part 2, installation

The ghost dog mosaic (see previous post for details on it's construction) was installed in the kitchen earlier this summer.  The entire mosaic was cut into sections about 8" long for transport to NM.  The bondbeam was spritzed with water, covered with thinset and the sections of mosaic installed one at a time.  I'm always nervous about fitting everything correctly because I construct the mosaics 1200 miles away and can't check as I go along.  In this case, the fit was dead-on; whew!  The mosaic was then grouted with a sanded, reddish grout to match the wall.

In the photo here you can see the final mosaic.  I had to use a flash to take the photo (the kitchen is a very dark room) so the mosaic is actually more visible than it is in reality; the colors of the wall and woodwork are also washed out.  The final result is quite subtle (the colors match the wall well), the tiny mirror stars twinkle as you walk through the room and the ghost dog (good ole' Darwin) looks great.  It will look even better after the burnt adobe wall is scrubbed and sealed, a process that will reveal more of the natural colors in the wall (now covered with lots of dust and bits of concrete).

The next project for this wall will be a shallow shelf unit to hold canning jars of non-perishables (pastas, beans, cereals, etc.).  Perhaps I'll have enough of my Mom's aged wood to make the shelves.  We'll see!

Big praise for small stones, Part 1

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I gravitate to (but don't necessarily enjoy) projects that require 1) a lot of time and 2) little bits of things to be rearranged into something else.  I'm also cheap (these days by necessity), so if I can make something out of little bits of nothing, I'm pretty happy.  The adobe walls of the cabin are set on a concrete block stem wall which sticks out on the exterior and is indented on the interior. How to cover the unattractive concrete and spend little money?  The original idea... rocks, stones & pebbles.

Scrounging around my mom's house looking for furniture, I found a box of small saltillo tiles.  These are low fired unglazed tiles that have colors very similar to the brick floor and burnt adobe walls - perfect!  I cut the tiles into triangles, sealed them thoroughly and set them with thinset.  I made sure to leave a large space under the tiles to allow for expansion of the bricks during the winter when the solar gain through the windows will heat the room, and the rest of the cabin. 

The rest of the area was filled with small stones and pebbles from around the yard, again set with thinset.  It's a puzzle finding stones to fit the spaces, but the overall look is quite nice - very natural.  Of course, the hard part will be the grouting...  Stay tuned for Part 2.

The ghost dog in the kitchen

Excuse the mess, I'm working!

Things are progressing in the kitchen, and before it gets too built up, I've decided to install the mosaic above the counter in the kitchen.  As described in a previous post, the idea was to have a long mural placed over of the bond-beam concrete.  As it is now (see photo above), it's pretty unattractive; half is a strip of concrete, half is a mix of concrete, stones and brick.  The colors of the mosaic will blend well with the burnt adobe and the overall darkness of this corner.

An aside: eventually, I hope to make wine here and when that day comes, I'll need a label.  In a previous post, I described the Ghost Dog, and I've been thinking about logos.  I've come up with the design shown at left.  The main body is ceramic tile with bits of mirror for stars and glass nuggets for leaves.  The ghost dog will be cut from pale yellow glass.

The mosaic has made ahead of time in IL, using the same technique used on the mosaic on the kitchen floor (see previous post).  The mosaic will be cut into manageable pieces, packed into a box, and taken to NM for installation.

Stay tuned for photos of the installation and end results.



By the way, big Yea! to Southwest Airlines for allowing me two free boxes of weird stuff each time I fly to Alb.  I have slowly moved  nearly an entire household box by box on SWA over the past two years and the airline staff have never been anything but super positive.

Grout.... the horror!

What a handsome fellow - a roadrunner pebble mosaic - done!

This post is dedicated to my friend Melody Ellis, a truly fine ceramic artist.

The first trip of the season out to NM and one of the goals was to grout the blue glass wall in the bathroom.  A previous post described the installation of the pebble mosaics, and all that was left to complete the project was the grout.  I admit I had a lot of aprehension; mainly due to the pebbles.  True, I had sealed them thoroughly, but I just couldn't get away from the idea that grout would stick into those tiny pits and crevices and ruin the lovely birds.

Melody suggested grouting to match the tile color which would emphasize the mosaics and diminish the tile.  Since I wanted to visually expand the space (tiny bathroom!) having the effect of a large blue sky would be beneficial.  Surprisingly, I had a difficult time finding grout colorants (either you pay a lot for tiny amounts of pigment, or you pay less for enough pigment to color a warehouse floor).  In the end, I had to special order pale blue grout from Home Despot, but no complaints.

So, here's the process:

Tape off the area around the mosaic.  I did this because I chose to grout the birds with a grey/beige grout.  Although in hindsight, I should have used a darker grey.

Grout each bird.  Recalling Melody's advice, I just pressed the grout between the rocks with my hands.

Clean off the excess grout.  Not as difficult as I thought it would be!  Yes, there was a bit left behind, but I can live with it.

Remove the tape, and let the grout set overnight.  I retaped over the birds, then grouted the tiles (not worthy of a photo).  Even though the background grout is a clear, light blue, it looks grey in the pictures.  The overall look is just like a blue sky. 






So, I have to apologize Melody.  Cleaning the mosaics was NOT horrific (I was sure it would be), no grout left in the crevises (I was sure there would be), and my birds are lovely (I was scared).  I had doubts.  You did not.  You told me all would be well and it is!  Thank you Melody, your advise was spot on.

cranes flying toward the window

Floor Mosaic - Part II

The mosaic for the space between the kitchen and living room was installed during a recent trip. (The creation of the mosaic was described in a previous post.)

Once at the cabin, preparation of the site became a time consuming process. The gap between the living room floor (brick) and the kitchen floor (stained concrete) was deep (4”-5”), uneven and dirty. The two floor surfaces aren’t level to each other, so when filling the gap, a slope had to be created to prevent a toe busting ledge.

Mind the gap!

I had to mix numerous, small batches of concrete and fill the gap slowly. It took nearly a bag of concrete, which surprised me, and after about three hours, the gap was filled. This was a big psychological jump for me because that gap has been irritating for a long time. Before the kitchen floor was poured in ’08, the gap was a hump, an uneven toe-grabber that captured an endless supply of sand, pebbles, nails, etc. Thank goodness it’s gone!

The mosaic was installed with thinset and grouted with a terra cotta colored grout (the color I’m using for most of the tile work in the living spaces). In hindsight, I should have used a darker color, which would have blended a bit better with the brick, but overall, I’m pleased.

The guardians in place - finally!

The final mosaic looks very nice and now I have a relatively even floor surface throughout the cabin. One more piece of the puzzle complete!

A Handful of Stones....

A flock of mosaic cranes flying toward the window.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am really good at coming up with ideas.  As I mentioned in a previous post, if it's complicated, involves lots of little pieces and takes a lot of time, that's the idea that will pop into my head first AND the one I will be dedicated to trying. I guess that's why I like mosaics so much.

So, the bathroom.  It is quite small (about 4'x6') and I wanted to open it up visually.  As with so many other things in the cabin, I had to make the best of the layout.  I decided to make the bathroom a wet room; tile all walls except one and have everything waterproof. 

On the wall with no plumbing fixtures, I thought a mosaic would visually expand the space, and I settled on the simple design of birds flying through a blue "sky" made of 1" tiles.  I wanted the birds to be realistic, but simple and decided to try pebble mosaics.  Native species were the obvious choice, so the final mosaics are a Gila Woodpecker on the door jam (see below), a roadrunner on the floor (also below), and s flock of Sandhill and Whooping cranes flying towards the window (see photo above).

The New Mexico state bird - the stately roadrunner.

 I figured that in this day and age, if you want something (like1" sky blue tiles), you should be able to find it pretty easily.  Not so.  I had a heck of a time finding simple, pale blue, small tiles.  Sure, there is a diversity pool tiles, but the current trend in tile is glass, which is pricey (starting around $20 a square foot).  I didn't want iridescent, glitter, foil, swirls of color, or textures, just plain-ole, pale blue, small tiles. In the end, luckily, I stumbled upon Vidrepur recycled glass tiles.The color is perfect (close to a real sky blue), the tiles are inexpensive (yay!), and mostly recycled materials (great!).

The mosaics themselves were pretty easy to make.  I used a a technique similar to my previously described mosaic, but with pebbles instead of tile.  The mosaic sheets were painted with tile sealer to prevent grout from sticking to the cracks and pits of the stone.  

A woodpecker will be pecking at the door jam.

 Installing the tiles and mosaics was pretty straightforward.  The main difficulty was keeping the non-square sheets of tiles aligned (which I didn't do well in a few areas).  The pebble mosaics were mounted on mesh and were treated like smaller sheets of tile.  The mosaics were taped onto the wall to decide their placement and orientation, then glued on with thinset.  Sheets of glass tiles were placed around them, with the final bits cut with nippers and placed next to the mosaic individually.  The two photos below show the work in process and completed.

The next step for this wall will be grouting.  On the advice of a tiling friend, I will use pale blue grout for the main wall and a medium grey for the mosaics.  I admit I'm scared of grouting those mosaics; all those tiny crevices in each stone. Yikes, I'll be using toothbrushes and tiny picks!  Oh well, I have to finish what I started.

Floor mosaic - part 1

Between the kitchen and living room is an archway - very pretty.  Under the archway, on the "floor" is a horrible semi-fractal cement mess with a thick electrical cable sticking out (won't discuss that here).  On one side is my beautiful hand-stained concrete floor.  On the other side is a beautiful brick floor.  The cement mess derives from the process of building the adobe walls (won't get into that here), not bricking over it when the living room floor was done and a variety of other factors that give me mental fatigue.

I made the decision to make lemonade out of lemons and put a tile mosaic under the arch.  I figure that would be the easiest solution to the problem.  The space is about 11"x45".  As a design motif, I chose Avanyu, the guardian of rivers and streams (like the one that  ocasionally floods 100 yards from my house, sigh).

The process itself is pretty straightforward.  First, obtain the matierals.  The floors on either side of the mosaic are reddish brown (brick and stained concrete).  Luckily, I found a nice terra cotta colored ceramic tile at the local Home Despot.  The design itself will be in white with accents in grey.  At first, I thought I would have a border in black, but decided against that after starting the project.

Ready to sketch the design onto one long piece of paper

The basic process for creating the mosaic is as follows: 1) sketch the entire life-sized design on a piece of paper; 2) cover the sketch with plastic wrap; 3) stretch nylon mesh over the plastic wrap and 4) glue your tiles onto the mesh over the appropriate part of the design.  I decided to use a very uniform layout of tiles for the background color and a random assortment for the design.  By doing this, the design itself stands out a bit more and emphasizes  the dragon-ness of the design.

Finished! Looks great

Notice in the picture above that the mosaic does not go to the edges of the sketch.  I wil fill this in during installation on the floor.  You can see the plastic wrap (pink), but not the mesh (it's there!).  After letting the glue dry, the whole thing is ready for the next step

A view of the entire piece

If necessary, and it was here, cut up the mosaic into managable 'tiles' for easy movement and installation. Even though the glue is only basic school glue, it is strong enough to hold the tiles onto the mesh.  The mesh is flexible (I used nylon tulle for this project, cheapskate that I am), but it will hold, trust me!

Cutting into pieces for shipping to NM

Close-up of cuting; mesh is clearly visible.

The next step is to package it up and ship it to the cabin.  Stay tuned for a future post about the installation and grouting.