Busy week and new idea's

I've had quite a busy week this week, I started on a new project and caught up with some much needed things in the garden.

The new project is a 2D heart, made from wood this heart is going to be a hanging piece for a change. As the centre is cut out, my plan is to hang a nice crystal which will catch the light as the whole heart moves round in the breeze. Because my hands are sore from doing the latest panel for myself, I decided this would be a great time to use all the brightly coloured sweet wrappers I'd been sent, and make a tempered glass mosaic.

On tempered glass mosaics most of the design is done before the glass even touches the object. Any manner of things can be used under the tempered glass, sweet wrappers, foil, glitter, magazine cutouts, in fact almost anything that's flat. My love of bright colours drew me towards using the brightly coloured sweet wrappers sent to me by a my daughter and friend and fellow stained glass artist Kev. Once I'd attached the sweet wrappers with a little help from my mate Steve lol, I then did two coats of a holographic glitter paint. This will shimmer as the heart slowly spins around, giving an extra dimension to it. I've used large seed beads as an edging to the heart and then I'll be filling in the rest with tempered glass. One side is complete now, but I need to get some more large sized seed beads for the other side.

I've also been catching up with planting out the seedlings I've been nurturing this last couple of months. So tubs of flowers have been planted up, along with 3 courgette plants and 2 runner bean plants, and my carrots are also coming along nicely too, as are the spring onions. It probably doesn't sound much of a veggie garden to most, but I've got very limited space in my garden so all my veggie plants have had to be done in pots, this is also partly so they survive my big old dogs wanderings too. I had planned to have more veggies than this but there just hasn't been enough hours in the day to do everything !!

I treated myself to a lovely pot for a plant to go underneath the mosaic panel by the side of my front door. It's in lovely shades of green and as the plant is a quite unusual twisted spiral one, both are set off beautifully against the white wall and finish off the whole look I wanted for the porch. Photo's to follow !!

Presenting my latest commission !!!

Finally ..... my latest project. As some of you might know, I was given a free hand with the design for this. The only thing requested was that I cover the guitar entirely.

Now this is off on it's journey to its new owner, I've started something new. A completely different type of mosaic this time. I'll be using tempered glass this time, a first for me, so an interesting project.

New project

I started a new project yesterday, to mosaic a pair of Dr Marten boots. That might seem an odd thing to do, but I've seen very femmine shoes mosaiced and although they look really good, I'm just not a really femmine type person. So, I thought why not do something that would appeal to me ...hence the Dr Marten boots.

The first step is to get the leather as stiff as I can, so it'll take the glass tiles without buckling under the weight. Following a suggestion from my daughter I've started to paper mache them. This seems to be working really well, and isn't taking as long to dry as I expected, which being the impatient type of person that I am, I'm pleased about that. I've done about 3 layers on one boot so far and will keep you up to date with my progress as I go.

I'm also adding more photo's of my crafts today, I wish that over the years I'd taken photo's of everything I'd made before it sold, I would have a huge portfoio by now. But as often happens you're only wise after the event.

My first photo today is of a tree sprite, this is made of copper foiled stained glass and copper wire. They are always custom made to fit each tree, and carefully attached so as not to cause the tree any damage.



Next is a leaded stained glass astrology wheel. It has various astrologic symbols painted on the glass and then is fired at a low temperature in a kiln to make the symbols permenently fixed to the glass. This measures about 14" across.



Lastly is a mirror which was called Wilderness. It is done in a unique way and is one of the few times I won't share the method with people. The abstract design winds it way around the mirror and has glass nuggets to add colour to it.

A new day a new year

Well it's 2009, the new year came in very quietly for me, my daughter had fell asleep, tired after the drive home yesterday, and even the dog deserted me and went downstairs lol. But he soon came back when the fireworks started going off the big wuss !!

My new years resolution is to get my glass work seen by as many more people as I can, that's my only one too ...no point in stretching myself too far lol. I have to admit I tend to only decide on resolutions, that I'm likely to achieve, as I hate to fail ;o)


So to start off I'm going to upload a few photo's of some of my creations today, that's me already achieved my goal this year haha. But seriously I want to find out new outlets to sell from, I'll try locally first and then further afield. I'm also going to get my work seen on the net more too, as one of the things I'm quite happy to do is do commisions, in fact a lot of the work I do is commision work to be honest. People do seem to like to own things that have been made specially for them. I've also been starting to do a page on Indiepublic today, a website with hand made items on it, once I'm happy with how that looks I'll be putting a link on here.

This is a mosaic mirror that I made it measured approx 18" x 12" and sold for £75.It included mirror tiles, stained glass tiles, metal adornments and mirror tiles.



Another mirror this one is slightly smaller and includes mirror tiles, stained glass tiles and glass nuggets.This little beauty is for sale.



Something slightly different this time, a jewellery box which is mosaiced on all sides apart from the back, this is for sale.

My very first blog entry

Well hello everyone, I've often read people's blogs and found them really interesting and toyed with the idea of doing one myself..but as I live a very quiet life I wondered if I'd ever write anything that would be remotely interesting to anyone else lol.

But here I am waffling away..... I live on a small island off the coast of North Wales. Lack of mobility and lack of transport means I spend many many hours at home. To stop myself going entirely insane I fill my time doing various arts and crafts using many different mediums. My first love is working with glass, sometimes it's fused glass, sometimes stained glass but most recently it's been glass mosaics. The mosaics first started out because I was running low on bigger pieces of glass to work with. So in my wisdom or ...... madness, I decided that it would be good idea to cut all these off cuts of glass into tiny 1/4" squares. Hmmm hundreds of squares later, with cuts galore and sore fingers from scoring so much glass, I often wonder if that was such a good decision lol. As I get more used to this blog lark I'll start adding photo's and you'll be able to see whether it was a good idea or not !!

I started drawing as a child, and can clearly remember my mom having a go at my dad, when he used to bring home paper from work for me to draw on lol. Thank god he ignored her, art and crafts have helped me keep my own identity and sanity for many years now lol. Now after two marriages, two long term relationships, and 8 kids my art and crafts is still as rewarding as it ever was. I've turned my hand to many forms of art, including pastels, oil painting, glass painting, silk painting, water colours, china painting, and decorated mirrors. Sometimes I would see things in shops that I liked but could never afford, so I would go home and try making them for myself. These ramblings will probably include some haphazard tutorials of various crafts, so that hopefully others might try new things out.

A close up of the front of my latest mosaic. Which is exhibited at our local glass gallery.


The gallery owner wanted me to do a guitar mosaiced all over this time. The sides were a real pain to do lol.


Finished at last, this took many many days to complete and almost beat me a few times I have to admit. But I got there in the end.