Glass ornaments ..... part 3 of 3

ROUND ones:

Glass ornaments .... part 2 of 3

Odd-shaped:

Glass ornaments .... 1 of 3

Long ones:

Marbles!

Took a class a couple of weeks ago....

Spiral cat-eye marble


A vortex marble!


and.... two broken marbles.... here's one of them anyway:


I'll post the other broken one later tonight, I hope. I should be able to start making these at home on my own soon. I just borrowed a small kiln from my parents and can't wait to get started!

inky sketches

Made while listening/participating in meetings @ work....

Food as art?

Some of us may have gotten a little over-enthusiastic while picking strawberries last week... what you see here is almost 9 lbs of strawberries being washed... which were later turned in to:
- Straw-blu-barb streusel
- Strawberry meringues
- Strawberry gelato
- Strawberry salad
- Straweberry-papaya shakes
- Frozen strawberry yogurt




...and we still have a BIG bowl left of them for eating fresh.... unfortunately no one at my house wants to look at strawberries any more at the moment....

more tie dye....

More tie dye from last week.... there are still a few other things I haven't photographed yet.... but I think I am moving on to other stuff :)

Food as art

Here's what we did on Sunday:







we made (braided) a bazillion Choereg (Armenian Easter Bread).
They turned out really neat!
(and tasty, too!)

Tie Dye folding chair!

After much strenuous re-stretching of the silly canvas (never put these things in the dryer. never.) we have two fully functioning folding chairs again :) and instead of a before and after shot, you get to see both at once. I'm not disassembling and re-assembling these chairs ever again if I can avoid it. (but if I ever do, the white one may get tie dyed, too!)

7 random things

Since I was tagged and I feel like sitting downstairs for a bit... I will fill out the request, but with the standard L-edits

The Rules:
• Start with 7 random facts/habits about yourself
• People who are tagged have to write their 7 things on their blog
• Then choose another 7 people to get tagged and list their names
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment to tell them they have been tagged


1. In general I find that at any given time I have no fewer than 5 projects in some form of not-finished.
2. I have heard people refer to those as UFOs... Unfinshed Objects.. so apparently my house has UFOs in it.
3. The UFOs are usually in vastly different mediums. (in other words, when I say 5 projects, I don't mean I am knitting 5 scarves or painting 5 paintings at a time)
4. My favorite art materials are.... metal, glass, cement and paint. In roughly that order.
5. Even though paint ranked as #4 in that list... I have oil paints that I am a little afraid of trying. Something about needing strong chemicals to clean your brushes/fingers and the paint not drying for ages.... it also brings to mind images of some cool painting marred by stupid pets while I'm not home.
6. I tried batiking for the first time ever today. let me tell you. it's a SLOOOOOW process.
7. my hands were dyed blue-green for most of friday and saturday but I remembered to wear gloves when batiking today.... so except for a little dye around all of my fingernails, we're pretty back to normal in this house :)

Before:


After:


This was made at the same time as the tiled bench... but this piece is not (yet) having the same issues as the bench in the previous post. I *think* that that is because this is *not* a curved surface.... maybe.

A tiled bench

The bench pre-tiles....


The tiles on the counter....


Tiles are attached w/ thin-set...


The next day is grout...


After cleaning off the grout...


unfortunately.... the bench is curved and that is leading to structural integrity issues... I just got an update today, and I hear that the grout is cracking and there's at least 1 loose tile :(

Latvian Easter Eggs

LATVIAN EASTER EGGS

Start with raw eggs, onion skins, various vaguely edible things to put in along w/ the eggs (these are not needed if all you want is to make them brown), and old nylons/tights/pantyhose. Wrap eggs with onion skins and other misc things (pasta, rice, grass, tapioca, etc...). Tie off the nylon/casing inbetween each egg to keep all the stuff pressed up against the egg. Wherever that stuff is pressing will be less accessible to the dye coming from the onion skins, which will give your eggs a wide range of color, going from pale yellows all the way into a deep deep brown and sometimes you'll even get greens & purples, too!



Boil eggs ~30 minutes... Cool eggs and cut the casing open.



Admire the eggs... each one is different!





We did regular eggs, too!

New screen door!

BEFORE:

(picture missing - I am looking for it)

I can't find a picture w/ my old (beat up, aluminum) door... but here's what my door looked like at the height of my DIY misery.... notice there are multiple layers of house I had to take off in order to get this to work...



AFTER!


...is very nice - no?

New bathroom faucet

So... this actually happened way back in April, but I finally found the old picture for comparison... my big bathroom's faucet went from this:


to THIS:


Much nicer - eh?

(Don't worry ---the mosaiced tiles are still inthe bathroom, but instead of leaning against the backsplash, they now are hung up on the wall as they were intended :)

a new (slate!) floor!!!

First... the gosh-awful carpeting in a crowded front porch... I'm sure that part of the awfulness stems from the not very cleaned up porch that resulted from the door-installation fiasco of the previous weekend (pictures of that forthcoming in the next week or so, too)



Did you say you wanted a close-up of that?
Welll....
OK...





After removing the carpet, I see that there's a lovely cement slab base to start from!!! (actually, I knew that already or else I wouldn't have sprung for the slate tiles)




So I lay out my tools... before this (I didn't post a picture of it, but I have one if you are interesed) I opened the boxes of slate tiles & set them all out on my driveway, where I hosed them off, let them dry and then sprayed them with their first coat of pre-grout sealant.


Took a short coffee/tea break after laying down 20+ square feet of slate....






Apparently took (a very important) break just 8 tiles later...






Phew. Here's what the floor looked like after ~8 hours of tile-laying. Each of these tiles had been handled no fewer than 6 times before being installed... carried to car, set out on driveway for clean & seal, carried in to porch for Layout #1, rearranged into current layout, moved over & out of the porch so I could start installing, and finally each one picked up and back-buttered for maximum stickage & tile-eveness...
Yep. those are the *technical* terms ;)



The (almost) final product... it's been grouted with a lovely "pewter" colored grout and is currently curing so that I can put 2-3 coats of another sealant on.... I'm thinking I will use one that will give a *slight* shine to the tiles without actually making them super glossy...