More on Peacock Mosaic With Photos

I was having trouble with the last blog post.  It would let me post a picture but it would not let me type anything.  I finally gave up trying to get it to work and hit Publish just to get to a new box. Hopefully, after I finish this post I will be able to go back and delete the other post.

Anyway, in my last bit of blogging, I had left off at grouting the mosaic.  I had grouted it with light gray grout.  Imagine my surprise when my beautiful iridescent peacock disappeared and I was left with a stepping stone was covered with shimmering glass with no discernible pattern.  It was very strange.  Once in a while, if you stood in just the right place, the peacock image would appear.  It would disappear if you moved and would be hard to find unless you were looking at it from a certain angle.  It was like one of those magic pictures that were popular a few years ago, where you had to stare at the picture just right in order to see it.

I lived with that for a while, because it was an interesting optical experiment.  However, it wasn't really what I wanted.  I had spent a lot of time and money on this peacock.  So I decided I had to fix it.  I determined that part of the problem was that when I added the grout, that the stone became a unified field.  I had to change that if I wanted the peacock to be seen.  I broke up the field by painting the grout with acrylic paints.  I used metallic blue and green, gold leaf paint, and black and white paint.  It allowed the peacock to shine through.  After painting the grout lines, I sealed the grout with a concrete sealer.

The other part of the problem was not really fixable.  Iridescent glass looks differently from different angles. You would hardly think it was the same piece of glass. Because I was laying the glass pieces on top of a design, the glass was laying flat.  When the stone was set up in a stand, the glass color was different.  I have not been able to have the peacock appear as nicely as it could look if it is sitting in its stand.

And to further take the wind out of my sails, not everyone recognizes this as a peacock.  One woman asked me, "What is it?  A sea monster?"  So this mosaic was a case of Live and Learn.