My Tie-Dyed Pickle Jar

So far I've shown you two mosaic projects that I made in class. Once class was over, I still had the mosaic bug so I looked for projects to work on completely on my own. I found a pickle jar in the fridge and hastened to empty and mosaic it.

My teacher told us about what she does when working with glass and it seemed simple enough: Tape the picture you want to the inside of the glass and mosaic over it. I Googled some tie-dye images because I knew they'd have tons of color and I wanted a small image so it would be pixelated (sp?) when I enlarged it. I chose this image:

I taped it to the inside of the pickle jar and used bits of stained glass and tesserae. I liked the effect of the tesserae. Without light it looks one color but with a light behind it, it's an all new color. Around the top of the pickle jar I used those little glass blobs you can buy for flower vases or fish bowls. I liked the glass blobs because they were black but shiny like hematite rocks.

I have yet to find a decent way to cover up the jar ridges but I'm in no hurry.

Usually I discuss the things I would have done differently. I don't have anything to list here. I love it!

I will mention that it was a challenge to glue this on a curve. The WeldBond dried fast but this project took a while as I let it dry. I had to turn the pickle jar little by little. I must add that working with those little yellow peices and turning the jar did seem like I was working on corn-on-the-cob at times.

I could use this jar for several things but right now I'm using it for part of my giant pen collection. I could also use it as a votive candle holder or a money jar but right now it looks very cute next to my computer holding my Toy Story 2 pens:

Glue Boogers and Cat Hair

I'm going to take a moment in this blog to explain some mosaic terms I've been omitting so if I use those terms in the future, you'll know what I mean. Everything but the "sand" in my first project is stained glass. The weird tiles with the lines carved into them were called vitreous glass tiles or tesserae. They are Italian made even though the ones I buy seem to come from San Francisco, CA.

In the checkers board I used a coffee mug and in my current project I'm using a plate. While you may think that they are just mere coffee mugs and plates, they are actually called pique assiette (or picassiette). The term was created in 1938 after some French guy named Raymond Isadore who covered his entire home in pique assiette. His neighbors hated him and the eye sore he was creating so they called him "le Pique Assiette!" which means "plate stealer!" Obviously the term is now used for the plates, coffee mugs and other found glass so non-French speakers can sound intelligent when discussing mosaics.

This is where I began my project early yesterday. As you can see, I already cut out the flowers and I was getting ready to chop up more pieces to fit in around the flower on the top of the keepsake box. The wheel cutters are still a part of this process. The glue I'm using is called WeldBond. It's like Elmer's Glue but stronger. Much stronger. Glue-your-own-fingers-together stronger. It dries very quickly.

Emma helped. She watched the entire process. She liked the part where I cut the plate inside the plastic tub. She could see the pieces fly all over and she would sometimes lunge at the outside of the tub. I guess it must have been a slow day for birds flying into the window yesterday.

She was very cute. I don't think she left me all day. Next time, however, I'm putting a hairnet on her tail. She was always trying to stick it in my way.

And here is the finished product. Finished but not grouted. I'll do that in the next few days. I'll blog the process of that too.

Overall, there are things I would do differently. This plate was hard to bust apart. It didn't cooperate quite the way I would have liked. And plate rims are a bitch try and cut out. I hope I didn't ruin the wheel cutter. Those are expensive along with everything else attached to this hobbie.

The one thing that I found working too well was the gluing process. I'll have to remember for the next time that the strongest adhesive agent around is glue boogers and cat hair. This entire project would not have been made possible without it.

Until next time, "MLAAAAAAAAGH!