Holiday Bazaar at Oreana Winery

Yesterday was the EtsySB Holiday Bazaar at the Oreana Winery here in Santa Barbara. It was a beautiful day.  The temperature at the Winery was 75° during the day. I was very glad to have my pop-up tent.

My friend Jennifer helped me set up the tent, tables and mosaics. And then she came back at 5 pm and helped me take it all down again. I sold a few items, and got a lot of good feedback from visitors about my mosaics. All in all a very pleasant day!

Holidays and Mosaics

It's the day after Thanksgiving so I think it is OK to start decorating for the holidays. So I have my mosaic stocking on the front door!

And the Blue Agave tequila bottle mosaic below is getting better and better. I will try to finish gluing today.

Tomorrow is the Holiday Bazaar at the Oreana Winery so I've got the car packed and ready to go. I'll have at least 25 mosaics for sale, all priced for holiday gift-giving.

If you get a chance, stop down at 205 Anacapa Street, across from the Amtrak station, and see all the wonderful EtsySB artists and their art.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! I am so thankful to live in Santa Barbara, and have wonderful neighbors, friends and family. Here it is almost December, and there are still beautiful Begonias blooming in the garden.

Yesterday I did another grout marathon. The sun scene was grouted in a light color because I plan to paint the grout with various colors. The stones are real slices of stone. For the watering can, I made up some grout that I thought would match the turquoise of the can. I have some silver strips that I'm going to touch up with gold and insert into the two bands in the middle of the can.  

And don't forget to stop by Oreana Winery on Saturday, 1 to 5 pm, to see the EtsySB artists. We'll have lots of nicely priced items for your holiday shopping. 

Holiday Bazaar - EtsySanta Barbara Artists

Come visit the Etsy SB artists Thanksgiving weekend at our Holiday Bazaar. It's Black Saturday, November 26th, at the Oreana Winery, 205 Anacapa Street, across from the Santa Barbara Amtrak Depot. Come taste delicious wine, visit food vendors and browse through over 15 local artists. And I will have mosaics priced to sell for holiday gifts or just something for you.

Rainy Day Mosaics

It was a very rainy day yesterday, so we stayed in the house and worked on mosaics. The cats slept a lot.

Here is the blue agave mosaic with the fused tequila bottle. I used some black sparkly Van Gogh glass for the border. Obviously I took this picture indoors so you can't really see how cool the Agave leaves look. Today the sun is rising so I'll take another picture.

And here are the double-decker sleepy boys. Prancer is below on their fancy tree-shaped cat tree. You can just see the long shape of Biscotti up on top of the room divider. There are fluorescent lights up there so it is warm.

Mandala de Corazón

Here is the grouted heart mandala, Mandala de Corazón. It looks a little dusty in the picture but in person it is quite pretty. What is my obsession with hearts? And sunbursts? I don't know but I can seem to quit making them.














Here is Mr. Froggy. I should have used a lighter grout but you never know until you do it. There is a way to paint the grout after it has dried but that never works very well with charcoal grout. Maybe I should call him Chameleon since he blends quite nicely into the background.

So today I'm going to grout the blue and orange sunburst and the red sun scene with a lighter grout.

And my friend Gary slumped and fused a tequila bottle in his kiln for me. The bottle has a pleasant meaning (!) for me so I'm making it into a Blue Agave mosaic. I put some colored fabric under the bottle and glued that down. Next I'm going to put the word Tequila on top of the fabric, and finally I'll glue the bottle on top of everything. Gary was very clever and used frit to keep the bottle from rolling, so that adds a very nice color to the bottle.

Grouting Day

Another busy day of grouting. The peacock on the left had a few pieces dislodge when I grouted it a couple days ago so I reglued the pieces and regrouted. You can see the charcoal grout over his head.

I also grouted two more round pieces; a mandala with hearts and the tree frog. Unfortunately, I'm not happy with the grout on the tree frog. This is why I hate to grout! The grouting itself is not bad, but picking the right grout color can make or break the piece. Tomorrow I'll take pictures of the finished products.

Then we have the kitties staring out looking for creatures. This is where they like to sit when I'm working on a piece at the big table.

And at last, they have a rat on the run below. I hope you don't find these pictures too graphic. A while back I had an infestation of rats in my garage. This was before I had my young cats and Orange Boy was just too old to get up into the rafters. The rats made nests and chewed up suitcases and ate books and paper products. It was really a mess. So it's better now that they are kept somewhat under control.

Grouting with the Kitty

So today I did a little more grouting (still have about six pieces to go). This cute little heart turned out well with rose beige grout sprinkled with pink glitter. It's only about 6" across. The center rose was cut from some English china with my ring saw

And below is my trusty sidekick Biscotti. He hung around with me while I worked in the yard.

Life is better when you have pets!