Mosaic Progress II

There is no news on installation so I have posted photos of the finished mosaics completed so far (still on the paper prior to installation).



Wild flowers



 

Heralic Designs





trail logo



four completed mosaics



Home Made Glue

2 empty jam jars
plain flour (about 6 heaped desert spoons...may be 7 dosent matter, could have eight?)
2 heaped desert spoons of table salt (hard to heap table salt on a spoon)
bring to a gloopy boil (this looks like boiling mud just a creamy colour) simmer for as little or as long as you like and then pour into your empty peanut butter jars.

Sounds easy......the trick is not make your glue lumpy. Mix the salt and flour together dry, than add water that you've already put into the jars, so you know how much glue your making. Add a little water and mix, add a bit more and mix so you make a paste and keep diluting it. If you put all your water in, in one go that's gonna make it lumpy and globules of flour float to the top. Forget that nonsence about sifting flour into boiling water... it's rubbish.

This is a water soluble glue to stick your tiles onto the paper.

Draw your design onto some brown paper. Then take it over to the window and place it flat on the window so you can see through it. Now you will trace the image onto the other side of the paper. This is so your design is now back to front. This back to front version of the design is the one your gonna colour in with mosic tiles. These tiles are stuck onto the brown paper using your home made water soluable glue which in my case was still warm.



This mosaic is from the design of a medieval ship on the River Medway.



completed ship.

So I have several of these to make and have not got photos yet of the ones completed so far, I have also decided that every kerb stone marker needs the little red and white circular logo and that all the backgrouds are green so that they look similar to the new sign posts and are part of the trail. Rather than people think they are just randoms.

Previw of the finished rocks.

I have finished the two rocks and I took them outside and photographed then at the end of my road on the grass bank. These rocks will  be fixed in place at Rede Common and Broomhill Park. So I have photographed them amongst wild flowers and grass.



Wild flowers




face of Anne Pratt as young girl.



wild flowers





Anne Pratt the Victorian Botanist 

 So now I will start the mosaics for the marker posts. I will make them on paper and fix them at some later stage. This sticking mosaic onto a paper face is called the reverse technique and enables me to make them without having the actual markers yet.

Mosaic Progress

I have got a few photos of the rocks being covered with tiles. The original circular designs are really acting as a guide only.  Working on a 3D surface like this changes everything, so I decided I want a flower here, here and here, indicate where that was with chalk and join them together with white lines. It is pointless drawing a design on the rock as I cover it over the design with cement.... and can't see where my lines were. So its all pretty free form.

Covering the second stone with flowers.



This was the final session and as you can see...... er....... one of those chalk lines must be in the right place?



When I finished it I then need to grout them. This is to keep the weather out.
Totaly covered the whole thing with black grout.
 The more you put on the more you have to take off!
I'm sure they will clean up fine.



If all goes to plan the majority of the markers will be on these upright kerbs, so I need to modify my designs again to fit into a very narrow, sort of tall but thin shape. Below is a diagram of what these markers will be like. I think the little round cross logo goes on the top of each stone, so this will indentify them as part of the trail (same as the sign posts).