Wood Green Arts and Crafts Fair Godmanchester

Great weekend over at Godmanchester in Cambridgeshire at the Wood Green Arts and Crafts Fair. Lots of lovely people interested in mosaics. Big thank you to everyone who stopped by the stand to chat, and of course to those kind enough to purchase one of the garden mosaics on offer. Hope you enjoy them!

Fabulous work there from other crafters too, as well as some tempting food - which by a miracle I managed to resist!

Tiger,Tiger!

Hurrah! A commission for an outdoor piece completed. A gift for someone who loves tigers and all things tigerish I decided to go for a tiger's head in glass mosaic on a slate background. The slate gives a lovely dark dramatic background to the head. I produced it working on to mesh and then applying the mesh to the slate as I thought it would give me more control with the placing of the pieces than applying direct. Normally I name all my pieces but can't get past Tiger, Tiger as in the wonderful William Blake poem for this one!

In the words of William Blake (1757-1827) himself:

Tiger, tiger, burning bright 
In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Adventures with Chicken Wire

Making mosaics which are three dimensional is fascinating to me as it requires so many different techniques to bring a piece into existence. One of the methods of creating a sculptural base is to form a shape from chicken wire, wrap it in bandages made from old sheets and then use a mix of sand and cement to firm it up and make the surface on which to mosaic. The challenges in using this method to create the vision in my head when I started are many - and I don't always completely succeed, but like many unplanned outcomes in life, sometimes I like the end result just as much. It probably also says a lot about me that I really enjoy the hands on element of creating a shape from such humble materials and then glamming it up with sparkly glass mosaic. The transition from ragged strips of cloth over wire to a solid prettied up end product never fails to amaze me, like the magical properties of grout, of which more in a future post.

In the meantime here's my latest work from my adventures with chicken wire.

I have called her Purple Haze Puss and here she is cozying up to some purple flowers in the garden.

A Warm Fleece and Waterproof in May......

One of the things about making mosaics destined for the garden is that they are of course outdoor pieces. When in the UK working from a small shed I long for warm dry days, not too windy of course, so that I can work outside with some space to move around the piece of work and spread out tools, bags of sand and cement, materials etc. Sadly the weather gods have not granted my wish recently and the endless days of rain, sometimes accompanied by a chilly wind have made May feel more like October so I've largely been confined to the shed with only the occasional foray outside to fetch water for mixing adhesive and grout and grab a quick photo opportunity when the sun has appeared to remind everyone it's still there and that summer will arrive one of these days.
Slightly short of slate tiles without a trip to the supplier I used my last one to start the woodland creatures series and chose a squirrel as my first furry friend. Here he is just after grouting so still looking a little damp round the edges as I took advantage of one of the brief spells of sun to take this photo.

The next challenge is to get back to sculptural work, the subject of my next post. which will hopefully be written on a glorious sunny day!

Where to begin....

I've been talking about starting a blog about Lavieenrosemosaics for ages now, and even my capacity for procrastination has expired so here goes on a rainy afternoon at the end of April.
My mosaic life had a stuttering start several years ago when I attended a weekend course and came home with a crudely designed ungrouted mosaic mirror, a desire to do more, and a lack of confidence caused by being virtually ignored in favour of more talented and experienced people on the workshop. The mosaic seed of obsession had been planted however and several years later I discovered the wonderful mosaic courses in outdoor work run in Scotland by Jan of Wild Tiles at the fabulously mosaicked home and B & B of Katie and David. By the end of the week I was loading a table top into the back of the car and planning enough projects to last a lifetime. Three years on lavieenrosemosaics has been born named for the love of southern France and the sunshine feeling I get from making mosaics. As with all passions in the crafts world I've found new friends, endlessly kind supporters and a shedload of inspiration from all quarters. It needs to be a shedload as when in the UK my 'studio' is the garden shed.

I've progressed into a whole range of work, and I'm currently working on developing sculptural techniques to make 3 dimensional pieces for the garden. Here's Donatella the bling turtle. The next post will feature a the pre mosaic stage of my next piece so the development can be seen.
At the same time I'm working on a range of smaller pieces on slate tiles in groups of three, with three flower tiles, and the first of the woodland creatures started.

Thanks for reading - back soon with more mosaics.

www.lavieenrosemosaics.com