By most counts, fall is my favorite season. The weather is much more bearable, Western PA is absolutely beautiful and it's the appropriate season to break out some of my favorite foods and scents and decor items. Unfortunately it is also my peak allergy season and the days get steadily shorter. It's only been a few weeks and already I miss late dinners and later dog walks, eating on the porch and being able to cut the entire yard in one evening. It's not easy settling into a new routine, but we're working on it. Yesterday I remembered to eat early so Sadie and I could walk after dinner. Tonight I forgot. Poor puppy needs exercise if she's gonna be bearable inside, which she will be so much moreso in the coming months.
To keep my mind off of both unemployment and the darkness, I decided to finally put up the mock mosaic on the "Fireplace" in the living room. I use the quotes because it's actually a piece of furniture that burns cans of gelatinized rubbing alcohol. It sounds silly, but it looks real and is an integral part of my big Victorian plans for our living room (which may take a while to carry out).
The first thing I did was lay it down on it's side (though I'm pretty sure this will work on something upright as well) and pick through my pieces of broken plates. The great thing about mosaic is you can use anything you want! Then, I laid them out in the order I wanted them.
I decided to stick them down with hot glue, but if you decided to try this, make sure to take into account the materials of your tiles and surface when choosing an adhesive.
Then I put joint compound in an icing bag to use as my cement.
Then I piped joint compound into ALL the cracks, and smoothed it out.
As it dried, I noticed cracks starting to form from shrinking compound. I think I'm going to let it dry for a full week before filling in the cracks. Technically, once it's dry you should coat it in polyurethane or some other clear coat. I don't think I'm going to do that unless I have to because it tends to yellow and there's an awful lot of white.
Cost of Project: $0 I had everything I needed just lying around. I think I'm going to paint the fireplace eventually, but I made sure to clean the wood up of joint compound in case I change my mind.
I stumbled randomly on this blog when surfing through tags and came upon this post. I read a few words and then scrolled down to see what it was about, and when I saw the broken plate I thought whoa! This person must be really angry about fall! Then I realized you were making a project (which, by the way, looks awesome!).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, thanks for the interesting post!
Lol, glad you enjoyed it. I truly love fall. As a matter of fact, i honestly can't imagine what it would be like to live in a place that doesn't have 4 distinct seasons and i'm totally ok with that. Unfortunately, we're having a rough time finding our fall rhythm this year.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you about having a hard time finding it. Maybe it's because of the hot weather, or just stress. I DID go to a corn maze last weekend, but it stopped being a fun, romantic thing when we came across a lost family and had to help guide them out. It was especially urgent because the lady said, "The redhead isn't even ours! We just found him!" And the redhead looked up and cheerfully said, "I'm lost!"
ReplyDeleteSo I hope we find our fall rhythm soon!
Such a cool project! I'll have to give it a shot sometime.
ReplyDeleteFall has arrived down here--or at least, what we get of fall. Hope it comes to you soon too!