Walking on Wednesday - The Beginning of My Mosaic Journey

Boxes full of broken glass ~
Be careful what you wish for.

For more years than I can remember, I have wanted to try mosaic's. I view things like dish sets, pieces of glass, and broken mugs as broken into tiny pieces waiting to be re-assembled and grouted into something beautiful. 

I have even purchased entire sets of dishes at yard sales just for the purpose of breaking and then mosaic'd. Of course, we are using one of said dish sets now, and I sold the others before we moved because I really couldn't justify spending the time, effort and money moving three sets of dishes with the hope of someday doing mosaics. 

I shouldn't have worried, because at our first estate sale here in NC, hubby got me an entire mess of broken glass (see photo to the left) because I was ALWAYS talking about how I wanted to do mosaics. Be careful what you wish for, right?

Meet Mr. Froggy. My first mosaic.

Well I am happy to say I finally got started with one of the things that has been on my 'someday I want to...' list.

I have to stop and smile sometimes - I am finally getting to what I have wanted to do for years and years. 
I thought I could easily get into mosaics, being that I took a stained glass class a few years ago and am familiar with working with glass, cutting glass, etc. But have I built it up too much? Have I made it more than it is?? 
Perhaps I have. 

Heals rather quickly, or else wasn't that bad of a cut,
but still, this is why there was a supply of
 Band-Aids in my stained glass tool box.

--Because all these pieces of broken glass need to be broken into smaller pieces for my forms. 
--Because I haven't used my glass scorer and glass tools in several years. 
--Because I forgot how the tiny shards of glass get everywhere.
--Because I forgot what it feels like to have small glass cuts on my hands. That happened yesterday within the first half hour of working with the glass. This isn't the fun part.

But I am close to the fun part. The design, the placement of the colors to create a beautiful butterfly. I can almost see the finished piece, even though I am really still at the beginning.

The beginnings of a butterfly.

It was so much easier to walk into a place that already had the glass cut, the forms ready, the glue and grout in nice single serving packages. But did I really want to skip that part of the journey? It is certainly expensive to do it that way, and there really are limits when you use someone else's tools, supplies, materials and space. 

No, the journey starts from the beginning, and the reward is much greater when you take each step on your own. You take on the picking of the glass, the breaking of the glass, the purchase of the glues and grouts, the designing your own forms and creating your own forms. 

Future dragonfly and butterfly.

I jumped in with both feet on this one. No holding someone's hand, no taking it from step three. From first to last, this is Raige's project. Raige in this case including hubby, as he drew and cut the forms for me. His sweat and tears are in this project too. Four saw blades and much frustration later I have three forms to use thanks to him. 
(Cement board, as it turns out, is NOT the best thing to use, so these three are the first and last forms using cement board.) 

Once a lovely tiled birdbath -
now pieces for my mosaics.

I am still looking at things and thinking 'hey, I could use that for mosaics'. 
This birdbath (to the right) started falling apart, so I thought 'perfect for mosaics'. Washing each one is taking patience, but I am sure it will be worth it in the end. 
This IS better than having all the pieces set out before you, no back story, not much effort. THIS is what a project is about.

When you decide to take on a project - how do you view it? 

Do you jump in with both feet, or do you dip your toes in? 
Or - do you just ride the boat to the destination and try to enjoy it once there?