Mosaic Begonia and a Cute Cat

Mosaic Begonia chloristica

This weekend my friends Mike, Gary and I went to Los Angeles to attend the Westchester Begonia Show and visit with friends. I submitted my mosaic of Begonia chloristicta and won a blue ribbon. The mosaic frame also won Best in Division for the arts division. What a thrill! I used the colors of the Begonia's botanical picture in the frame's vitreous tiles.

On the right is a picture of me with the mosaic. Life is Good!

You can just barely see the division trophy (bottom left) which was a pretty ceramic pot. I probably won't be breaking it up for the next mosaic!

On Friday night, Mike spoke to an appreciative crowd at the South Bay Begonia Branch. Our dear friend Eva took us to dinner at Cozy Mels in South Bay where I had a blue margarita. What could be better! Tequila in my favorite color.

And below is the darling Biscotti sitting atop the irrigation cover. He's hoping a bird will come by to check out the birdhouses.

Biscotti

Happy New Year's Eve

Biscotti and I wish you all a very safe New Year's Eve and a wonderful year in 2012. Neither of us combed our hair for this shot. Why does Biscotti look so much better???

Merry Christmas 2011

Biscotti and the keyboard

Merry Christmas to everyone! It's going to be 70° here in Santa Barbara today. That must be Santa's gift to us. 

I have a new computer with wireless mouse and keyboard. I found that Biscotti doesn't mind if I set the keyboard on him while we're working. He just looked up at me occasionally and then went back to sleep! 

House number ungrouted

And trying to add some mosaic news to this blog about mosaics, here is the house number I made for my dear friends. I couldn't post it until today because I didn't want them to see it in advance. Above shows it ungrouted. Below it is grouted in charcoal and I added some bling to the grout while it was still wet because my friends love sparkly things.

House number grouted

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.

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!

Cold Windy Day

It's a cold, windy day, and the kitties played inside more than usual. Here they are on their scratching post. Prancer Dancer is on top and Biscotti is on the bottom.

I spent most of the day working on mosaics, doing cleanup work like painting substrates, drilling holes for D-rings, patching some holes that were in the wrong place, etc. The blue and orange sunburst has been completely glued, but I'm not pleased with one of the branches of the sun. So tomorrow I'll pull out the offending pieces and try to make it more to my liking. I also see a couple potential grout rivers so I will probably fix them also.

And I worked a little on the Tequila bottle that I'm making into a Christmas-themed mosaic. I'm using Lexel to glue the pieces on as it will dry clear. I will grout it also.

That's it for today. Glad you stopped by!

Oh, and today is my brother's 70th birthday! Happy birthday, big brother!

Mosaic Landscape and Cute Cats

I seem to really like sunbursts. This mosaic has no real goal other than I cut the beautiful red circle out with my circle cutter and then thought I should make a sun to go with it.

I also bought some rock slices at the SAMA convention and have been wanting to use them in a mosaic. So here was a good opportunity. I added them along with a tree with millefiori pieces to look like apples or flowers. Below the piece is starting to come together.

When I went outside to take a picture, Biscotti and Prancer hopped up on the table with me and posed adorably.

Biscotti and Prancer

More Cat Adventures - Biscotti

Biscotti sleeps on his cat tree

"Something is waking me up!"

Biscotti is sleeping on his cat tree. But then there are camera flashes waking him up so he struggles to sit up, still very sleepy.

Time to get organized....arrghh!

So a couple things happened recently to spur me on to organizing my spaces (I have several rooms and a studio dedicated to my mosaicing). First a friend decided she didn't want to work with stained glass any more because she kept cutting herself. So she asked if I wanted her stash of glass. Of course I said yes, and went out to pick it up. It had been sitting outside for a long time against her garage. I washed most of it and passed the transparent pieces along to my friend Gary who works with stained glass.

Biscotti

Next I visited another friend who had a very organized way of storing her glass. She uses Michael's storage containers to organize glass by color. I was very impressed and went right out to Michael's and purchased four of these units. So now I've started repositing the shelves in my garage to make room for those containers. Then, since many of the sheets of glass were large, I'll need to cut them down to fit in the storage bins.

Next I moved my Beetles and Bits cutting system, circle cutter, ring saw and grinder to the studio. I'll take a picture of that later. And the most important picture, this is my helper Biscotti.