New blog " Manic Mosaics "

For a long while now I've been aware that my ramblings on here are losing track of why I actually started this blog ....to showcase my arts and crafts. So I've had it in my head for a while now, to do a blog which really will have just my arts and crafts !!

So here begins the birth of Manic Mosaics, it still needs a bit of time spent on it, prices added etc etc, which I'll do as soon as possible. But for now here it is
MANIC MOSAICS in all it's glory, do pop by and say Hello.

Gorgeous weather

Yesterday saw a return to some lovely sunny weather. With my bronchitus slowly starting to disapear, I thought now would be a good time to start my walking back up again. That little plan almost went out the window when I had an asthma attack just as we were leaving the house. But by the time we'd got a few things done, and got to the beach, I felt ok again.

So with my trusty old dog by my side I went for short walk to the sea edge. As it looked so inviting I couldn't resist going in for a paddle with him. I managed to get my skirt and my bag ( which I'd taken with me for some unknown reason ) wet, but the sea was lovely so who cares !!!

The mosaic guitar is coming along nicely, and I spent yesterday afternoon sitting in the garden in the sun, cutting even more small pieces of stained glass.It's a boring and thankless task and sometimes even gets painful if I do a lot of glass cutting, but it has to be done. On this guitar the client has requested that the back of the neck is also mosaiced, so I will have to cut some specially sized pieces to follow the curve of it, that will be a challenge on it's own. But the customer is always right as they say.

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.