Alls well that ends well

I returned to the final mosaic class with the understanding that we would be grouting both projects.Thomas had cut the board, he uses tile board, the kind you buy at Home Depot and use when building a shower. Problem for me moving forward, I need to find a different surface, this is very heavy and large. But that is a minor issue. As you can see he istalled the hangers before we transferred the mosaic, so as not to have any problems later. So far so good.Then the trouble really started, remember how I didn’t have plastic over the whole board?  Yeah, big problem, the silly little cheap school glue stuck like cement to the board. It wouldn’t come off. By then I was pretty upset, no I didn’t throw a fit, I remained calm while Thomas came up with suggestions. What he ended up doing was to cut out the center and transfer that.This section on the mesh was transferable.This is what remained on the side, so now, I needed to soak this, remove these pieces and reinstall on the new board. I had to work quickly because I had laid down thinset cement and there was still the issue of grout.It’s a good thing I work fast and was able to salvage all those pieces, since I hadn’t brought any more glass with me.  Thank God, it looks great. I still had my hand to grout. Using a strong glass glue we glued these pieces onto glass and set them for an hour to dry. Well, two of us used too much glue. (we were following instructions). So It was too wet and messy, no grouting till I got home. I took this picture 4 days later, the glue is supposed to dry clear. It really hasn’t dried. Now it will take forever since I’ve grouted it.At least this one was pretty straight forward. It is now hanging in my powder room.

But back to the big mosaic.I took a lot of the powdered grout home. It was a beautiful spring day, so I worked outside.…and worked….Grouting is the hard part. I can’t work with gloves, I need to feel what I’m doing. So my hands are now dry like a reptiles’. The silica just drains out the moisture from everything. Cleaning off the grout is labor intensive. I do love this stage because the final finished piece emerges. The grout really ties everything together.This isn’t a one time appliquation, I kept adding more and more grout till I achieved a relatively flat surface. Here you can see a polished corner next to an area that needs a lot of work.

Half way through, another big problem arose. Remember those hangers?  They are supposed to be on the top of the piece. Well, they weren’t. When Thomas laid out the mosaic, he forgot to check. You might say, so did I, but when I pay for a class, I sort of expect that to be something the instructor pays attention to. I have learned so much from books and online classes – where I know – it’s all up to me. When I pay for a live instructor, I don’t want a newbie. He just learned how to do mosaics himself 1.5 years ago, and immediately set out to teach. Now I understand, every teacher learns from their students, but he wasn’t teaching us, he was working on his own projects along side us.Finished and I am very pleased. One more thing to do. I carefully removed the screws from the back. Then I laid the project on two towels on the grass. I feared that working on a hard surface would harm the mosaic. Very carefully I installed the hangers on the correct side. With the holes left over to indicate where they were before.Signed it on the back and soon this will go and live with my boys. I know they will cherish and love it. A piece of the wedding, the glasses they broke are forever imbedded in a handmade mosaic.

As for me, I think I’ll be sticking with online classes for a while…