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.

Grouting and grout dust

Grouting and grout dust are rapidly becoming the bane of my life !!! Despite putting a sheet on the floor, the dust has got everywhere and I mean everywhere. It's becoming a real battle between me and this grout, and I SHALL win come what may. After cleaning off the latest lot of surplus grout on the guitar, I ended up covered in the dammed stuff. A quick look in the mirror as I went to the loo revealed it had made my already greying hair look even greyer, in fact I resembled a badger there was so much of the stuff !!

Never ever again, will I do a mosaic guitar with tiles on the head and back of the neck of it. I don't care how much money I'm offered, it's just not worth it. At a rough estimate I think I will be earning approximately 20p an hour (if that) for this commission and the guitar isn't even finished yet !!

My daughter and I unpacked, sorted out and repacked 7 boxes today, in between me working on the guitar. We're now down to 5 boxes and quite a bit of stuff to put on Freecycle when we've finished sorting boxes out. Only the attic to go now, I dread to think whats up there, as I've never been up there. But once it's done, they'll only be the stuff that's out on display to be packed up...when the council finally does the business and allocates me a permanent bungalow at long last !!

My friend Cathy has started writing a blog, it is going to be partly therapy for her and also a warning to other women that are thinking of bringing a Nigerian guy over here to live. Let me assure you I am by no means racist, but the way my friend has been treated by this guy is just disgusting and has reduced her to shadow of her former self. http:/cathyslivinghell.blogspot.com

The end is in sight

After another week of working hard on the guitar, the end is almost in sight I think. The back of the neck was as tricky to mosaic as I suspected it would be, and if I get any more commissions for guitars I will be trying to avoid doing this again. The back is pretty much grouted now, just the back of the head part to grout. Then I'll flipping it over to do the front. At the moment the grout is all white, but I'll be doing a wash on it, as I find white a tacky look, especially on something as big as this. But all in all I'm very pleased with the way it's looking now, in fact I think I'd go as far as to say it's my best piece so far.

Today my daughter Jenny that lives with me, will be going over the first tattoo she did on me. She was very nervous when she did it, and had a proper tattooist watching her, which didn't help, and consequently she made a mess of it. But she has made another design that will go over it and cover it completely. Last weekend she did two stars on my other daughters foot, and wasn't happy with one of them at all, in fact it worried her that much that one of the stars wasn't 100% perfect, and she thought the design was going bleed at the edges, she almost gave up the idea of doing tattooing at all. But a week on and after being reassured by her sister that the tattoo is healing up nicely and the design hasn't gone smudged on the edges (bled) she's ready to bite the bullet and redo my one. She has started a folder of photo's on her facebook for her journey into tattooing, so I thought I would support her and also do her journey on here too. So today's photo's will be of the 3 tattoo's she's done so far. Incidentally you can get a brief preview of the guitar I'm working on now, in the background of my foot.

A very interesting day

I had an email from Mike at the gallery yesterday, saying he'd had a guy from Ireland in, showing a lot of interest in the remaining mosaic guitar. This guy was interested in me doing some instruments with more of a celtic feel for him as he owns a guitar shop, and that he'd passed on my details to him. Within minutes of me getting the email, I had a text off the guy in person and he's going to ring me today. Hopefully this may bring in a commission.

I'm feeling very tired this morning, I got up at 5 am yesterday and worked pretty much solidly all day till 11pm on various stained glass things, apart from a chat on msn with a friend, taking the dog out for a walk, and cooking my dinner. I decided to patina 3 of the 6 rainbow coloured twirly sun catchers for a differet effect and to see if they sold better than the silver soldered ones. When you patina silver solder it turns the solder black, this is then polished up with grate polish to bring it to shine, very messy and time consuming but effective. I've also started doing 5 ladybird sun catchers these are something completely new to me and may appeal to people with children. I've got one more ladybird to copper foil and then it'll be soldering later today. I must remember to take photo's of the twirly sun catchers and ladybirds before I take them to the gallery. I still haven't found the camera lead .... well actually I haven't had time to look, there's just not enough hours in the day at the moment.

I've decided to go back to writing directly on my blog rather than using the Live Writer option, as I've noticed that it's taking a little longer for my blog to load now I'm not using a photo host. So no more photo's on a tilt and with rounded corners lol.

This is the guitar that inspired the guy in Ireland to want some celtic instruments done.