More Tiling

Wednesday I finished up the Tile Mosaic class that I took through the Washoe County School District. Having learned a lot from my mutant cow trivet, I created and completed a sun design on a wooden tray. I found the octagonal wooden tray for about fifty cents at Salvation Army. I was attracted to the unusual shape. The tile used for the design came from a gold painted flowerpot, a ceramic halloween pumpkin, and a ceramic duckie box from my bathroom. I tried to purchase yellow tiles at Home Depot, but apparently yellow is out of style - not a yellow tile to be had! So the duckie gave its life for art. Well... craft, anyway. I planned to cover the sides with tile as well, but I ran out of time.

I still need to practice some on my grouting technique, but I feel confident that, with a bit of preplanning, I can tackle the bathrooms. I just need to choose a color pallette and start accumulating the right stuff to smash.

Day devoted to Craft

Today was the second half of my 2-part workshop on Japanese Wood Block Printing. Everyone had their blocks carved, so we went right to work printing. During the course of the day I made 9 prints, each with 3 seperate colors printed from seperate blocks. Although I can't claim any great results, I did learn a lot from each print run. Here is the best of them. Not exactly what I was going for, but what I've learned can be applied to better planned future projects.

After the class (and after a shopping spree in the Museum Shop) I took a tour of local thrift shops to buy stuff to use in my mosaic class. I am now the proud owner of a mass of ugly, but interestingly colored or textured, china. Plus I bought several wooden boxes, bookends, and a tray that could be the base to mosaic on top of. The best scores were from the bargain room of the local Good Will. There the posted price is $1 per pound, but the clerk eyeballed my shopping cart full of china and charged me only $14! And that included a cool vintage wall sconce that I may clean up, rewire and install somewhere.

Now on to knitting before bed.

Tiling inadequacy

Wednesday I had my first session of a 3-part Tile Mosaic class. While it was loads of fun, and I can really get into applying hammer to tile, my initial effort leaves a lot to be desired. Let me help you out - it's supposed to be a cow. Perhaps abstracts are more my style. This weekend I am off to thrift shops looking for odd items to break into little pieces or glue little pieces onto.