Glass Mosaic Gazing Ball - Part 7 - Embellishment

Grouted gazing ball.

In my last post on the gazing ball project I showed that the ball had been grouted.  Technically, other than giving the gazing ball a coat of exterior grade sealer, the ball is complete.  Since I used the grout with resin in it, the grout is already highly waterproofed.  I still use a sealer.  If you are going to take the time to make a gazing ball, you might as well make it so that it is going to last a long time.  However, there are still more options that you can use to change the appearance of the ball.  One of them is paint.  And how you decide to paint the ball can make a big difference in its overall appearance.

Grout painted to create horizontal bands.

You can paint the gazing ball so that it appears to have solid stripes, or add a contrasting color between  the tesserae and have stripes of a different color between each band of color.  Another option would be to paint the grout to match the ball so that the gazing ball appears to be solid.  You could add dots of color on top of the painted grout.  There are plenty of ways to change the appearance of the gazing ball.  I am showing a couple of options on this ball so you can get the idea.  After that, let your imagination take off.

Gold metallic paint added to separate bands of turquoise.

When I laid out the tesserae on the gazing ball I used a pattern that would accentuate horizontal bands of tiles and horizontal grout lines.  I first painted the grout lines between the horizontal bands of glass tiles.  The paint is not an exact match.  It is about a shade lighter than the tesserae, but when you are standing a few feet back from it, the band reads as a solid.  The lighter horizontal grout lines separate the bands of color.  At this point, I could paint those horizontal lines the same color and the gazing ball would appear to be a solid color.  If it was outside in sunlight, the light would be reflecting off the glass tiles, giving the ball a glow.

In this case, I decided I wanted to paint the rest of the lines with a metallic gold paint.  The metallic paint would reflect more light than the flat acrylic paint.  It also gives the ball the a much different look from the plain gray grout.  The gray color tends to recede.  Painting the bands a bright gold makes the lines appear to move forward. 

The painting of the ball is complete other than the sealer.  Since it was a sunny day, I wanted to take some pictures outside so that you would have an idea of what it looked like in sunlight.  Since it is still winter and the temperatures are below freezing, the ball will come back inside until warmer weather.  If rain soaks in through cracks in the grout or where the grout meets the glass, water can freeze and cause cracks in the gazing ball.

Polished metal gazing balls are so popular because the surface can reflect so much light. The grout on a mosaic gazing ball does not reflect light except where it bounces off or through pieces of glass.  I decided to use a high gloss exterior sealer to seal the gazing ball.  I want as much shine coming off the ball as possible.  The high gloss sealer will reflect more light than a matte or satin sealer.  I am only painting the grout and the edges of the tiles with sealer.  The flat front of the glass tiles will not be sealed.  They are highly polished and I don't want to cover that reflective surface.  I have already put on one coat of the sealer.  Once the second coat of sealer is on, the project will be complete.

Check back on the Sunday post for a new project.

Glass Mosaic Gazing Ball - Part 6- Grout

I have completed grouting the gazing ball.  I used a sanded grout.  If you look at the top of the ball, you can see that the grout is a little darker than the grout beneath.  I had to make a repair in that area.  The grout did not stay in that area very well when I turned the ball over to grout the underside.  A little of it came out and had to be filled in again once the rest of the ball was dry.  It will soon dry to to same color as the rest of the grout.

This repair brings up an issue that can be used as a helpful hint.  When you purchase a bag of grout, the
inclination is to dump the whole bag in and add your liquid then mix it up as per the directions on the bag of grout.  I generally hold back a small amount of the grout for a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that if you have added too much liquid to begin with, you have no grout left to help thicken the mixture.  I have had that happen more than once.  Having a little grout mix in reserve can save the day.  If you had to make a trip to the hardware store for more grout, your grout may have set up and could be unusable by the time you return. 

The second reason is that you may need to make a repair and if you have no grout left, then you will need to go purchase more grout.  In the case of this sphere, the grout crumbled out of the bottom and needed to be patched.  Another common scenario with mosaics is that a tesserae will come loose from its adhesive and come off when you wipe down the ball after grouting it.  In that case, you will need to clear out the area, re-glue the piece, and grout around it again.  If your grout has already set up before you find it, it is nice to have a little reserve grout around to mix up for a small repair.

When I mentioned mixing the grout with liquid above, I used the word liquid rather than water.  When you are purchasing your grout, make sure to read the directions.  Some grout works by just adding water.  Other grout only works if you add a liquid acrylic ad-mix.  If you add water to that, you are going nowhere fast.  Generally, you can add some acrylic ad-mix to the grout that calls for water.  Why use an acrylic ad-mix if you can use only water?  Because is will help prevent water from penetrating the grout.  The ad-mix essentially encases the grout mix in a plastic waterproof substance.  It could help your ball last longer.  Using the acrylic ad-mix will add to the expense of the ball.  Generally you have to purchase it in a gallon or five gallon size.  Once in a while you can find a half-gallon of it in a home improvement store on online.  You are more likely to find the smaller size online.  The current trend is to only offer the larger sizes in the stores. 

 For this gazing ball I used a light gray grout.  You have a few other choices, at most hardware stores you can purchase grout colors in white, gray, black, almond, and a few variations in the shade of those colors.  A little experimenting on paper before hand can help you with your grout choice.  The choice of grout color and help blend the mosaic together or separate the tesserae so that the lines becomes the most important visual aspect. You can find powdered additives that you can add to the grout when you mix it in order to have different colors.  Most of the time you will have to order and purchase the powdered additives online.  The colored additives are not found at all hardware stores.

You can also use paint on your mosaic gazing ball.  I have read that you can add liquid craft paint at the time the grout is mixed to obtain a desired color.  I have not personally tried this.  My experience with adding paint to another substance (a clay made out of drier lint) was that I had to add a lot more paint than I thought to make it the color I wanted.  It turned out to be much more expensive to add paint to the material than it would have been to have just painted the object the color I desired once the material had dried.  And if you end up not having enough paint to make the grout your desired color, you either have to settle for an unacceptable color or start all over again because more than likely the grout you have mixed will be unusable when you return from purchasing more paint.

Another thing I have learned about grout color is that bright white grout shows a lot of dirt; much more so than a gray grout.   As the gazing ball will be outdoors spring through late fall, it tends to collect a fair amount of dirt and grime.  The dirt against bright white will be very noticeable against the white.

I intend to embellish the gazing ball by painting the grout lines.  I have already started painting, but have not completed it yet.  You will see the embellished gazing ball on my Thursday blog post.  I think you will be surprised at how much painting the grout will change the look of the ball. 

Winter Scene Painting

I did not have time to grout the gazing ball as I had hoped.  More on that in a minute.  Since I did not have a lot of time to spend on things I worked on a painting.  Regular readers might recall that the last time I posted a photo of a picture that I had painted it was only my fifth painting ever.  It is one of those Catch 22 situations.  I don't paint very often, and when I do the painting isn't very good.  Since my painting is not very good, I feel discouraged and don't paint.  (It would also help if I could draw, but that is another story.)  Anyway, the only cure for bad paintings are to paint until you get better at it.  So this is painting number six.

This painting is what I think is called a memory painting.  It is a picture of the road that goes by my cabin.  I have not been there on a snowy day in a long time.  I did not paint from a photo of it.  It is just a picture of the road where it goes over the stream and up around the bend.  It does not actually look much like it.  Needless to say, there are a lot more trees up there than I put in the painting.  At this point I wish I had put in more background trees.  Oh well, next painting.  It still has that folk art feel to it, but I think things are improving.

I did not grout the gazing ball because I had a lot of other things that needed to my attention.  I hate to take on a project like that when I am feeling rushed.  I was also still a bit annoyed with my shopping experience for grout.   It was a frustrating day. I went to the hardware store that focuses more on home improvement projects because they carry smaller size bags of grout.  They have the size I need, and it was only $3.28.  But, that grout size says on the front that it is Part C of a grout product.  It says that it must be mixed with Part AB, and that you cannot use water.  There is no Part AB on the shelves.  After a futile search, I finally track down a store employee that says that there is no more Part AB and that they are no longer allowed to sell such small lots of grout.  I suspect that I know what Part AB is, and think that I might be able to use a mortar ad mix, but I can't say for certain.  I give up on that product because I don't know for sure that it will work, and I don't want to make a mess of my project if it does not work.  I had to purchase a bag of grout for $10.98 cents.  It is a lot more grout than I need, but what are you going to do?  I guess I'll be throwing out some grout.

I had to run some more errands, and that took me over by the hardware store that is geared towards builders and contractors.  I decided to stop by and check out their grout selections hoping that I could find a size that would save some money.  If I could save some money, I planned to return the other product.  Well, this store now stocks some grout in small containers.  However, the containers were so small that I would have to purchase two of them to make sure that I had enough grout to complete the project.  The containers cost $5.98 each.  That made it more expensive to purchase the two small containers than it did the large one.  So, it cost more to not throw away the extra grout.  I stuck with my original purchase.  The extra stop at the second hardware store made me feel that I would be rushing to get the project done if I started at that time. 

Hopefully, I will have the ball grouted this afternoon.  It is turning out to be one of those days that I call, "But wait there's more."  I have been trying to get to the point of grouting the ball since 8:30 am.  There is so much that needs to be done before I can get to working on the grout.  If not tomorrow, it will definitely be Friday.  Check back for photos of the gazing ball on the Sunday blog post.

Glass Mosaic Gazing Ball - Part 4

Ready for grouting

.

This week I completed adding the glass tesserae to the sphere.  All that is left is for it to be grouted.  I'll have to make another trip to the hardware store.  I guess some readers wonder why I did not buy the grout when I went to the hardware store for waterproof foil tape and silicone adhesive.  A legitimate question, and in this case I have a reasonable answer.  I live just about equally distant from two big name hardware stores.  One is more focused on the home improvement sector while the other markets to builders and contractors.  They don't always carry the same products; and if they do have the same products, the products come in different sizes from one store to the other.   One store did not carry the waterproof tape, so I ended up at the other store, which had the tape and silicone.  It had the type of grout I wanted but in huge contractor size units.  It was not going to be cost effective to purchase such a large bag because it was considerably more grout than I needed.  Once you open those bags, moisture and humidity can cause the material to harden over time.  So the material needs to be used in a relatively short period of time.  It was more cost effective to make a trip over to the other store to purchase grout in a smaller size.  Of course, you are paying more per unit of weight for the smaller size bag, but for this project it is still enough of a savings to make it worthwhile. 

I decided to set the tiles at about a quarter inch apart in order to accentuate the grout lines going
around the ball.  Using a wider grout area also used less of the glass, which helps keep the cost of the sphere down.  It will of course cost more in grout, but because this is a more expensive type of glass, using more grout is cost effective. 

Using a wider grout line also helps to anchor the tesserae and make the glass more secure on the sphere.  The grout needs to set up around each piece of glass and secure it in place.  If the glass is not entirely surrounded, or did not receive enough adhesive, a tesserae could become dislodged during the cleaning process that occurs after grouting.  If a piece comes loose, you have to chisel out the grout, reapply the silicone adhesive and tile, allow that to dry, and then re-grout the disturbed area.  It is a bit of work, and a real annoyance when you think you are just finishing up a project and find out that you have to make a repair.   By making sure that you leave at least an eighth of an inch between each tesserae you can save yourself some work.

Another reason for the wider grout line is that the grout lines can be used to be part of the pattern of the gazing ball.  A closer grout line would make the ball look more like solid glass.  By having wider grout lines, the line themselves form a visual pattern.  In this case it will be lines circling around the sphere horizontally.  The glass I am using has lines cut into the glass.  I have laid the tiles so that all the line are horizontal also.  This should give the appearance of directional movement to the gazing ball.  At this point, it is not easy to see, but once the grout is in place, it should be more noticeable.

Today it is pouring down rain.  Earlier this week we had an ice storm.  Tomorrow should be nice, and I hope to get to the hardware store.  I expect to have the ball grouted by Thursday.

Next blog post I will be writing about how the choice of grout color can affect the look of the ball and about grout additives.

Glass Mosaic Gazing Ball - Part 3

My apologies for the look of the blog today.  For some reason the blog platform is giving me a problem and I am not able to control the look of the blog.  Thins are getting way out of line and I am not able to fix it.   

In the previous two posts I had blogged about taping the ball with waterproof foil tape and how to determine the amount of glass you will need to cover the sphere.  So now it is on to mounting the glass to the sphere.  In this case, I am using a bowling ball for the base of the sphere.  Although this would seem to be a straightforward process, there are a few things that you might like to know about before you begin.  A little bit of a heads up can save a few mistakes here and there.   

                     

To make this glass mosaic gazing ball, I am using vitreous glass tesserae .  Tesserae are sometimes referred to as glass tiles.  This glass looks as if it is opaque, but it is actually translucent.  When you hold it up to a light source, you can see the diffused glow of light coming through it.  I expect that sunlight going through the glass and bouncing off the foil tape beneath will give the sphere a nice glow.  This glass was comes mounted onto sheets of brown paper with water soluble glue.  The advantage of ordering the glass in sheets is that you can figure out how many square inches you can cover with a sheet of the glass.  If you are buying glass tesserae by the pound, it is more difficult to figure out how much glass you will need for the project.  Glass is heavier than you think and will vary by the type of glass you choose.  For this gazing ball, I chose to use a single color of glass so that it will closely resemble the shiny gazing balls you see in garden centers, but the choices of materials,

colors, and patterns are virtually endless.

Vitreous glass tesserae.

 There are a couple of methods for removing the glass from the paper.  If you have a large enough work space and equipment, place the sheet in a pan of water and let the glass soak for a few minutes.  They will come off easily.  A useful method for a smaller work area is to protect your work space with plastic, lay down some paper towels, and place the glass side down on the paper towels.  Use a spray bottle to thoroughly soak the brown paper.  Allow the water to soak in for a few minutes, then peel off the brown paper.  It has been my experience with this method that little bits of the paper stay stuck to the glass.  I always give my tesserae a good rinse to remove the little bits of paper and wash off any remaining tacky glue.  Once the tesserae are clean, they are ready to mount on the sphere.

Paper backing on the glass.

Glass and adhesive can slide on the curve.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, the tesserae need to be no larger than 3/4 inch square.  Anything larger will not lay flat against the curve of the ball.  I use GE 100% Clear Silicone to adhere the glass to the ball.  I purchased the 2.8 oz. (82.8 ml.)  tube.  Wear gloves.  The uncured silicone can irritate skin.  The silicone is stiff in the tube.  It takes a fair amount of hand strength to squeeze out the adhesive.  With the small tube, you have enough control to squeeze the silicone onto the tile.  With a little practice you develop an idea of just how much silicone to put on the glass so that when pressed onto the ball it squishes out just enough to cover the tile without going over into the spaces between the tiles.  If you find that it hurts your hand too much, the other option is to purchase a tube and use a caulk gun to squeeze some of the silicone onto a pallet.  Then use a small knife to "butter" a bit of the silicone onto the back of each tile.  Eventually, the tip of the tube will clog.  I found that clearing the tip of the tube by forcing a small wooden skewer through it will clear the tube for further use.  The large tube will be much more silicone than you will need for more than one gazing ball.

So now on to a few useful tips.  First off, take care that you do not get any silicone on the front of the glass.  Once it dries, it can be scraped off, but it is a lot of work.  On my first ball, I was less cautious about keeping the silicone away from the front and I had a lot of scraping to do.  I used a dental tool to remove the silicone from the glass.  It was a real mess to clean up.  And, the floor of my studio became slick from the little bits of silicone.  It took a number of clean ups of the floor to keep it from being slick.  Seriously, it was so slick it was like walking on ice.  It is better to be cautious in the first place rather than to have to do so much clean up.  Make sure that your fingers are all the way to the tip of your gloves.  Part of my problem is that the gloves were larger than my hands and the overhang of the fingertips was what caused me to get so much silicone on them.

Understand that working on a three dimensional object requires some planning.  You will only be able to work on a small area at a time.  Once you get too far on the curve of the sphere, your glass will start to slide.  The silicone adhesive is viscous, but takes a while to set up.  Check the areas constantly to make sure that your tiles have not slid down against each other.  Remember that you need to have a minimum of one eighth of an inch between tiles in order for the grout to get between the tiles.  If not enough grout gets in, the tile may be loose and fall out when you are cleaning the tesserae after grouting.  At best expect to have five to ten minutes work time.  Then you will have to wait until the adhesive sets up enough that the glass will not slide when you turn the ball to work on a new area.  This will mean pulling gloves on and off constantly.  I have read in safety papers on art materials that it is recommended that gloves not be reused.  However, many people do reuse gloves, so I will make a further comment for those who do reuse gloves, at least on the same project.   Do not put the gloves up to your mouth and blow in them to push the fingers out.  That would be putting chemicals up near where you eat and breath.  Enough said on that matter. 

Some people may decide to just place their tiles at random, but having a plan for your grout lines can enhance the look of your mosaic.  In my last blog post I showed a couple of patterns of laying the tesserae an how that affected the look of the grout lines.  For this ball I have chosen to have horizontal grout lines.  Keeping a straight line while adhering tiles around a sphere is not easy.  You could end up coming around the sphere and find that your line has become too high or too low to meet up with your initial tesserae.  If that is the case, then you have a choice of turning your line into a spiral around the sphere; removing the tiles and gluing them on again; or adjusting the remaining tiles to try to correct the line which will leave the line with a dip or rise in it.  In this case, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Before laying the tesserae, use a large rubber band and a ruler to create a line around the equator of the ball.  Use the ruler to make sure that the rubber band is the same distance from your work surface all the way around.  Once satisfied that all is in order, mark the line with a marker and remove the rubber band.  Then you have a starting line that is even all the way around the ball.  Lay that line first.  Then work up and down from that line, turning the ball to bring your next area facing up.

You may also run into the problem that you don't have enough space to make the last tile fit.  Make slight adjustments to the last few tesserae laid.  The silicone has a fair amount of set up time, so you should be able to made the adjustment with no problem.  In the worst case scenario, you might have to pry up a few tiles and shift their positions slightly.   If the correction is made over two or three inches, the difference will be hardly noticeable.  Just make sure that you leave a minimum of one eighth of an inch between the tesserae so that there will be enough room for the grout.

As you work up towards the top of the sphere, make sure you check previous work to make sure that none of your glass has moved.  If it has, gently pry it up and glue that section again.  You will also find that you have to tip your tiles slightly to accommodate the curve of the ball.  At the very top, you are going to have to make some decisions on how you want the grout to look.  At some point, your grout lines will change as the you run into the problem of having squares on a curved surface.  The grout lines will be wider at the bottom and thinner at the top.  At the very top, there will be larger grout spaces between the squares.  You can choose to leave it like that, or you can choose to cut some of the tesserae to fit into those gaps.  If you cut tesserae, you will have a sharp edge on the glass.  Some of the sharpness can be blunted by scraping the glass against fine sand paper (or using a glass grinder if you have one).  In any case, make sure that the edge of the glass is well covered when you grout the ball.  Use care when grouting the ball that you do not cut yourself on the sharp edge.

I guess I will end today's blog here.  Next blog post will be on selecting grout and grouting the ball.

Glass Mosaic Gazing Ball Part 2- Glass Selection

One hole filled with foil the other topped with Silicone.

When I blogged on Thursday, I left off with covering the bowling ball with waterproof foil tape.  The entire ball was covered except for the finger holes.  That is where I will start today, then I will move on to glass selection.

Before I begin, a couple of safety reminders.  Always use glue in a well ventilated place.  Wear gloves to protect your hands.  The uncured product can irritate skin.  

Glass tiles on paper backing.

The finger holes in a bowling ball are deeper than one would think.    I use GE Clear Silicone that is used for windows, doors, etc.  The product comes in different colors, and you can use a different color if you wish, but clear is the better choice because it will allow more light to filter through to the reflective tape and bounce back through the glass. I fill one finger hole at a time.  I begin by squirting some of the Silicone adhesive that I will be using to adhere the glass to the gazing ball into the hole and use a craft stick to smear some of the adhesive around the sides.  Then I stuff the hole with aluminum foil until it reaches the top of the finger hole.  Then I complete the fill by using more of the Silicone adhesive until the hole is level with the bowling ball.  I complete the other two holes in the same fashion.  Then I let it cure for a while.  Once the Silicone is dry, I cover over the hole with more of the waterproof reflective tape. 

Now, on to selecting glass for your gazing ball.  There are lots of choices and the choice of glass will have a big effect on how your completed ball will look.  With every ball I try to experiment with a different type of glass to see what happens.  Glass gems, those semi-spherical pieces of glass glow and disperse a lot of light.  They also have the advantage of being smooth and you are not likely to cut

Glass patterns.

yourself on them unless one breaks.  The disadvantage to glass gems is that they give your ball a lumpy appearance.  Stained glass does not have as much of a glow to it as the glass gems, but it give you more lee way to create a pattern.  You can buy it already cut into tiles, but your choices of color may be  somewhat limited.  You can buy stained glass and cut the tiles yourself, but they will have sharp edges where the commercial tiles are generally beveled to avoid sharp edges.  The edges of your cut tiles can be blunted somewhat by placing them in a sealed plastic container and giving them a vigorous shaking.  After that, the tiles need to be rinsed and dried because they will be coated with glass dust.  (Wear a dust mask when dealing with the glass dust.)  Iridescent glass is more expensive than regular stained glass, but it has a beautiful glow.  You don't necessarily have to use glass, shells and small objects can also be used in a gazing ball.  View my post for April 16th 2014 to see examples of gazing balls with glass gems, iridescent glass, and stained glass.

For this project I used some purchased glass tiles that I had in my glass stash.  Yes, I have lots of glass.  My husband and I found that beautiful glass is just as addictive as fabric is for quilters or gem stones are for rock collectors.  So now I am trying to use some of it up.  These glass tiles are 3/4 of an inch square.  If you are purchasing or cutting glass tiles for a gazing ball, make sure that your tiles are no larger than 3/4 inch.  A larger tile will not sit flat on the cured surface of a sphere the size of a bowling ball.  Smaller spheres may require a smaller size tile.  You can purchase them as small as 1/4 inch square.  This pretty much means that most of the small glass tiles you see in your local home improvement store are going to be too large for this type of project.  You might be able to find them in your local glass shop, but more likely you will have to turn to the internet to purchase them.  The glass tiles are adhered to the brown paper by water soluble glue.  The paper should be removed before proceeding further.  More on that in the next blog post on Thursday.

The next step is to determine how much glass you need to purchase.  You want to make sure you have enough.  You don't necessarily want to purchase more than you need.  Glass and shipping charges are expensive.  So you have to figure out how much area you need to cover.  There is a formula for determining the surface area of a sphere:  A=4πr²

I will type out the explanation.  Area = 4 x Pi (3.14159) x radius squared.  For example, if your ball has a ten inch diameter, the radius would be five inches. The radius squared would be 25.  The math would be 4 x 3.14159 x 25 = 314.159 square inches.  Wait what?  That is what I said the first time I did the math.  If your ball has a different diameter the answer will be different and it will not look like you took the figure for Pi and moved a couple of decimals.  (And you thought you would never have to use Algebra once you got out of school.) But wait, you say.  How do you figure out the diameter of the sphere.  I could give you another formula, but lets do this the easy way.  Put you had at the equator of your sphere.  But a ruler up against your hand.  Support the ruler with your other hand and place your hand on the equator on the opposite side.  The number on your ruler will give you the diameter of your sphere.  Close enough anyway. 


So now you know how many square inches of material you will need.  If you are cutting tiles yourself, you will need to figure that you need a minimum of an eighth of an inch between each tile for the grout.  If you are purchasing glass tiles, it could be figured in for you.  The photo of the glass tiles shows that they come fastened to brown paper with an eighth of an inch between each tile.  The square of tiles is 12.5 inches on each side.  12.5 x 12.5 = 156.25 square inches.  156.25 x 2 = 312.50.  That is very close to the 314.159 square inches that you need.  You can choose to space your tiles wider than an eighth of an inch and you could probably get by.  Or you can order three sheets of tiles and have some left over to be used in another project.  Your choice.  Just remember, if you found something you liked once, it may not be available the next time you order.   If you can't make it work and you can't find more, then you have to figure out what you will do to complete the gazing ball.  It is not a disaster, it is just one of those happy accidents that make your ball unique.  Take this into consideration before you make a purchase.  It can save you from being disappointed.  Note that one tile in the photo is broken.  That tiles sometimes break should be taken into consideration when ordering.  This tile broke after it arrived here.  If it had arrived broken it could be went back, but then you are playing the waiting game and maybe they have more or maybe they don't.

Now that the choice of glass has been made and purchased there is another decision to make.  The pattern.  How you choose to lay out the tiles on the sphere will have an effect of the look of the sphere.  Note the photo captioned Glass patterns.  You can lay them out so that they have a grid effect or you can lay them out so that the pattern of the grout has a linear effect either horizontally or vertically.  In the upper layout the lines will have a grid-like effect.  In the lower layout the grout lines will have a more noticeable horizontal line.  Or the orientation of the tiles could be changed to have a more noticeable vertical line.   Another possibility is that the tiles could be laid randomly and/or with other objects so that no specific pattern was seen.  The placement of tiles will have a marked effect once the sphere is grouted.

I will have more on grout choices on my blog post on Thursday.

New Year, New Gazing Ball, New Projects

The new year has begun and I am on to new projects.  When it is cold outside, I like to work on a gazing ball for the garden.  I like to have one ready for Spring so that it can go outside as soon as the weather warms.  A gazing ball adds a pop of color to the garden even before the growing season gets into full swing.  I've posted photos of my completed gazing balls in the past, but this is the first one that will show the whole process of making a gazing ball from start to finish.  It does take a while to make a gazing ball, so I will be blogging about other projects under way while I am working on this project.  This morning it was a chilly nine degrees Fahrenheit, and it seems to be just the day to get to work on the ball. 

Covered with reflective waterproof tape.

I have plans to do another walking stick this year.  That will probably start once the weather warms up and I can go outside to work on it.  Otherwise the house smells like burning wood when I burn the design into the project.  I can only hope that I can be as inspired on the new walking stick as I was when making the Shaman Staff walking stick.  That was truly a strange experience.  Many artists and musicians have said that they felt that they were channeling energy that produced their work.  I felt that way when making the Shaman Staff.  It was an amazing experience.

My other plans include some papier mache' work and some different types of molding and casting.  There is also another diorama on the horizon.  I enjoyed creating the old house for the last diorama, although I did not care so much for how the diorama finished out.  I may go back an rework that diorama before going on to something new.  I have another painting in mind, but I'm not sure exactly when I will get around to it.  It is a wintertime scene, so I'll probably start it around the first snow fall.  Anyway, all this is sometime down the line, and it is time to get on to the new gazing ball.

The base for this gazing ball is a bowling ball.  Many people have expressed an interest in doing a gazing ball, but have had trouble finding a ball.  The bowling alley won't sell used or cracked balls to the public because they send them back to the factory for reconditioning and get a credit for them.  So what is a person to do.  First off, just put out the work that you are looking for a bowling ball.  You will be surprised at how often this works.  The bowling ball for this project was donated by a person that I barely knew after she had seen my gazing balls.  So don't give up on the power of the spoken word.

Another option is Freecycle.  This is an organization that helps set up local groups of people that will offer their used items for free to someone in their area that needs the item.  There are a number of rules involved such as that you must donate an item before you can ask for an item.  However, once you have donated an item you can request an item.  I request  bowling balls.  I have received four  bowling balls through Freecycle.  Here is a link to Freecycle:  www.freecycle.org  Be sure to read and follow all the safety guidelines for meeting strangers.

If all else fails, it might be worthwhile to lurk at your local bowling alley.  You will definitely meet bowlers there.  Sooner or later a serious bowler is going to want a new ball.  And if he or she knows you, the old ball just might be gifted to you.  If all else fails, you can cast Hypertufa spheres (See my blog posts for May 7th, 2014 through May 14th 2014 to learn about casting Hypertufa.)  There are also other options for casting balls or using other types of balls as a base.  Some options are better than others.  Do a lot of internet research before trying one of the different options.  I have read that using a basket ball works well, but I have not tried that, so I don't know it that is true or what the reader's definition of "well" might be.  Sometimes balls start to sag with the added weight of glass and grout on them.

Anyway, on to this ball.  I started with a bowling ball.  (Alicia, your bowling ball has now been immortalized on the internet.)  I sit in on a short tin can (such as one that holds tuna) to hold it in place while I work on it.  I cover the ball with reflective silver tape.  This is a special waterproof plumbing tape rather than the reflective tape that one uses to tape dryer ducts.  The plumbing tape has a very stick adhesive.  It is supposed to even be able to stop a leak when it is wrapped under water.  It will help to waterproof the ball and the shiny reflective surface will bounce light back through the glass to help give the ball a lot of shine and sparkle.  I suppose that the same thing could be accomplished with the other reflective tape (which is less expensive) but the waterproofing is a definite plus.  It is not absolutely necessary to use any tape, but consider this.  If your bowling ball were black, the light will be going through the glass and hitting a black surface.  Less light will be reflected back through the surface, making it look dull.  If your bowling ball is a different color, that color will be seen though the glass on the surface.  It could make your color look muddy.

Another reason for using the reflective tape is that it reflects light rather than letting the ball absorb it and the warmth that sunlight produces.  Bowling balls expand and contract with heat.  That can cause the grout to crack.  The only ball I have had that cracked is my first gazing ball in which I did not use the plumbing tape.  So for me, it was lesson learned.

I started this ball the other day, and it is covered with tape other than the finger holes.  I'll be blogging more about how to deal with them on the next blog post.  Today I will be previewing glass for the ball.  Once I have it picked out, I will start cutting the glass.  More on that next blog post also.

Jupiter Painted Hypertufa Sphere

Jupiter sphere with red spot

I finished painting and sealing my Hypertufa sphere.  I painted it to look like Jupiter.  Last blog post I showed the sphere with its base coats.  The last few days I painted in the turbulent atmosphere.  The  photos posted today were shot outside on a cloudy day.  Even though the sealer is supposed to be a matte finish it still reflected a lot of light.  It did not photograph that well outside. 
From several feet away, it appears to be swirling bands of color.  Viewed closer, you can see the many different bits of color that I painted to resemble the Jovian atmosphere.  I also need to make a smaller stand for it.  The stand is for one of my full size gazing balls and this sphere is too small for it.  I'll have to make another trip to the hardware store. Until spring, it will be sitting on top of the well.  Once the flowers are out, it will find a home somewhere among them.

Base coat for sphere

I guess some might wonder why I wanted to paint a sphere to look like Jupiter.  I actually came to that in a round about way.  When I start seeing something show up a number of times, I start paying attention to it.  I have to ask myself if this is synchronicity.  It is as if the universe has a way of telling me that it wants me to explore a subject further.  I think some of my best works of art have come from deciding to explore something that has been repeating itself until it gets my attention.  Other times, I make a work of art and synchronicities appear after I make the piece, as happened after I made the Folk Art Carousel.  Anyway, once something gets my attention, I feel the need to incorporate it into my art.

So from various sources, I started seeing references to Jupiter.  My first source showed up while I was making some Christmas gifts.  I was making some scented bath products and massage oils for some friends.  The products had various essential oils as part of the ingredients.  The oils had letters in parentheses after its name.  Further reading indicated that the letter corresponded to various planets and astrological signs and the affects that these planets/signs had on the oils.  Jupiter seemed to keep coming up.

About the same time period, I was perusing some magazine selections and came across a horoscope magazine.  I remembered that years ago I used to purchase a little astrology scroll that they used to have as an impulse buy up near the cash register at stores.  I picked up the magazine and flipped it open randomly to a page.  Guess what that page was about:  the planetary influences of Jupiter.   According to the information in the book of recipes I was using to make the gifts, and the magazine that I looked at, the planetary influences of Jupiter are good fortune, luck, growth, success, expansion, benevolence, and so on in that vein.  Furthermore, Jupiter was supposed to have an expansive effect on everything with which it comes into contact.  (At least on the positive side.  If you are making gifts, you would be sending good intentions and good thoughts I would think.)

Later on, as I was surfing the net and ended up on a link that took me to NASA space photos.  It had some beautiful photos of Jupiter.  Some of the photos were done in a false color mode which showed the turbulence of the atmosphere.  By now, Jupiter had my attention.  The high contrast colors of the false color photos really intrigued me with their potential for an interesting art project.

When it came time to paint the sphere, Jupiter was heavily on my mind.  I had used a couple of different casting methods when I was experimenting with Hypertufa earlier this year.  The casting method I used on this ball was to open a child's inflated plastic ball and fill it with Hypertufa.  (See more information on casting Hypertufa in my blog posts made May 5, 2014 through May 14, 2014 at the address for this blog:  folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com  or click on the months listed at the right side of the page and scroll down for those dates.)  The method used to cast the ball left a small circular indentation at the top of the sphere.  When I looked at it, it reminded me of one of the bands of atmosphere I had seen in the photos of Jupiter.  And that combination of events is what ended up with me painting the sphere to look like Jupiter.  It kind of makes sense in a garden ornament.  If you have a sphere to grace your garden, and each time you look at it, it serves as a reminder of prosperity, good luck, success, optimism, and benevolence it is exactly what you would want in your garden.

Regular readers will remember that I have blogged that I started using symbolism in my work.  This project shows that symbolism can be incorporated even into a single object.  Will everyone get the symbolism?  Probably not.  They will just see a sphere painted like a planet.  But that really does not matter, as the objects that one puts in the garden generally have meaning for the gardener.  If in fact symbols do have affects on people, even if they do not recognize them, then the viewers have been sent a symbol of benevolence.  If not, it can still stand as a reminder to the creator of the sphere that there once was a time when there was enough leisure time to make and paint a sphere.  To access that memory can be enough on a tough day.

A reminder to regular readers:  my blogging schedule has changed.  I will be blogging on Sundays and Thursdays this year.