One more summer craft

It was pretty fun and slightly intimidating to walk into a workshop studio and be handed a hammer and heavy duty glass cutters and piles of china plate chards and random broken pieces of glass and to be told, “Be creative!” in designing and assembling a mosaic bird bath. 19 women (and one tagalong husband) (not mine) started smashing and cutting, and glass started flying! No one seemed too concerned about safety (we all wore glasses or goggles), so I dove in and created this cute item for the garden.

First we collected, cut, and assembled our design on butcher block paper. Most of the china pieces were typical pastel flower patterns, but I was drawn to a trianglar orange and green chunk that looked like perhaps it had been part of a pumpkin dish of some sort. I couldn’t figure out what to do with it, and one of the workshop gals suggested cutting little petals and leaves from it and using that to center my design. Brilliant! With mosaics you have to see every piece not for what it is, but for what it could be. Then you have to be brave with the cutters!

I liked the idea of “reassembling” broken plate and saucer edges for outer and inner rings of color, and I filled in between with plain white pieces to help the center flower stand out and added a few pops of green color between the yellow and blue rings I really love the colors, especially since we were using a terracotta-colored base.

After our designs were laid out, we mixed up little cups of grout. Some folks tinted their grout, but I wanted mine to stay white. Then you smear the grout into the birdbath pan and smooth it out. Then you transfer your pieces to the grout and press them in. I pressed my pieces too much, so my grout kind of bulged, but I don’t think the birds or bees will mind too much.

After the grouted design set for 2 days, I mixed up some clear epoxy resin, and Steve and I smeared it over the top, bumpy parts and all. I set it under a little birdhouse decoration by the grape posts in the garden. It needs another day to finish fully setting, and then I can fill it with a little water.

All in all the project was pretty fun, breaking and assembling glass. Crazy. It makes me want to do a larger-scale mosaic project like maybe a patio table. I’m pretty sure I can interest Tana in another hammering craft project!