Update on a Painted Gazing Ball and Experimenting Again.

Jupiter Sphere newly painted.

In my last blog entry I had said that  I would be blogging off and on about several projects because of the length of time it took for the papier mache' to dry.  Depending on the level of humidity it can take a day or more for each side of the piece to dry.  I let my projects dry naturally rather than drying them in the oven.  So to have something going on while my project is drying, I am working on a few things here and there.  Today is about one of my gazing balls.

Jupiter Sphere today.

(Safety warning for those wishing to dry papier mache' in the oven:)   Note:  It is possible to dry papier mache objects in an oven, but I do not generally do this.  First off, it can be a potential fire hazard.   If your oven is too warm, or you walk off and forget about checking on it, your hard work can end up being toast (or worse).   I would recommend using a dedicated oven for your crafts.  Some products are not safe around food utensils and surfaces.)

Now, onto today's blog post.  I have made gazing balls in many different ways.  Many of them are mosaics created from stained glass and grout.  Other balls were painted with various types of paint: acrylic, baked on enamel, and exterior spray paint.  I have also used various types of substrates for the gazing balls:  bowling balls, hypertufa, and papier mache'.   The glass mosaics come inside in freezing weather in order to prevent water from getting in and causing cracks in the ball.  The painted ones have been left outside to see what happened to them over time.  Some have fared better than others. 

Some of the balls were cast in hypertufa.  Hypertufa is a mixture of cement and additives; generally Portland cement, peat moss, and vermiculite. The resulting cement is much lighter than concrete.  I painted the balls because I was momentarily bored with making mosaics.  After a couple of years outside, some of the balls are a little worse for wear.

One of my favorite painted balls, which I called the Jupiter Sphere has failed and needs a make over.  This ball was painted with acrylic craft paints and varnished with two coats of exterior sealant.  It was place outside in August of 2015.  Fifteen months later, the ball is in bad shape.  The paint has been completely stripped off the top of the ball by sun, wind, and rain.   The equator of the ball is in somewhat better shape, but is still pitted and devoid of paint in many places.  What paint is left is badly faded.  So it is time to do something else with this ball.

My first reworking of the ball did not go as planned.   Halloween was coming up, so I thought that it would be interesting to have a glowing sphere out in the yard.  I had some Glow in the Dark paint from another project.  In theory, the ball could be left out in sunlight, the paint would absorb the light, and glow at night.  Well it glowed....sort of.  I left the ball out in full sun all day.  That night, I ran outside to see the ball in the dark.  The glow was so low that it was very hard to tell whether it was glowing or whether the paint was just reflecting ambient light from the neighborhood.  After staring at it for sometime my husband and I decided it was glowing, but you had to be standing right at it to see it.  From three feet away you would never know the ball was there.  It was a big disappointment. 

Now I am making new plans for the ball.  Of course it currently has two coats of Glow in the Dark paint over top of the old paint.  The paint needs to come off before something else goes on.  Otherwise the paint could prevent the new surface from sticking.  I plan to use a wire brush to scrape the paint down to the hypertufa.   At that point I will have a couple of choices on how to rework the ball.

I think the easiest choice might be to turn it into a stained glass mosaic.  Another option would be to paint the ball with enamel bake in the oven paints.  (Using a dedicated toaster oven of course! And maybe outside in a sheltered area since there could be fumes.)  Concrete items that have been in the yard for quite some time have kept most of their color.  However, eventually those colors do fade.  Some of my enamel yard art has been outside since 2012.  The blue and white colors have faded but remain on the stepping stones.  However, the red is very faded.  This would be my first experiment on hypertufa in the oven.  I will let you know shortly whether or not the hypertufa held together when heated.

I have to wait a few days for time and good weather to see how the hypertufa will act when heated.  It will be a week or more before I get back to the experiment.  I do not know exactly what date I will be blogging about this project again, but it will be fairly soon.  Keep checking back if you want the answer to the question of how the hypertufa behaves.  In the mean time, I will be blogging about the Doll Experiment and other projects.