Raining, No Wood Burning - Update on Hypertufa Projects

Painted Hypertufa ball.

Adding a primer coat of Gesso.

Regular readers know that my plan was to blog today on testing various wood burning tips to see which worked best with the Celtic Knot Work design for the walking stick.    I do my wood burning outside on my outdoor work bench because the charred smell of burning wood makes my home smell like a forest fire has taken place.  Rain once again blocked my plans.  With drought being a problem in so much of the country I am grateful for the rain, but it is getting to be a bit much.  I had planned to work outside on Thursday.  It rained.  Friday, rain was predicted all day.  It rained intermittently throughout the day.  Saturday, the forecast called for no rain, but it decided to rain fairly heavily for about four hours.  Everything is still soaking wet outside.  Once it dries out enough, I will be outside working on my project.

Lip at the join had to be ground down.

In the mean time, I thought I'd update you on my latest Hypertufa projects.  I painted a small Hypertufa ball in January and put it outside.  A plain Hypertufa ball, or one that has been painted can stay outside even in winter.  I am pleased to say that the paint has not faded or cracked in any way despite rain, snow, ice, and hot summer sun.  The ball looks as good now as it did the day I put it out there.  It has inspired me to paint another ball.  I am half-way through giving the ball a coat of Gesso for a primer.

It is worthwhile to not the different casting methods used on the balls.  The painted ball (Photo 1) was cast by using a round plastic ball as a mold.  It does not have the join line in the center, but will always have a slightly flattened bottom. (gravity!) The other to balls (Photos
2 and 3) were cast in half sphere molds
and were joined at the center using thin
set mortar.  This leaves a line in the center. For more detailed information on casting Hypertufa, sign on to the blog and search the menu on the right hand side for blog posts labled Hypertufa.

If a ball has mosaic tiles and grout, the ball needs to be brought in during the winter months because water sometimes gets down between the tiles and grout and can freeze and cause cracking.  Remember to bring your tiled garden balls in for the winter once a freeze warning is issued.

I cast another Hypertufa ball and a stand for the ball.  This ball was a bit of a disappointment at first.  I had the mix a little too wet.  It slumped away from the mold and oozed slightly in the mold when it was turned over during the curing process.  This left a little bit of a lip on the edge of the ball and a slightly flattened top.  My attempts to repair the situation by patching in additional mortar did not help much.   I just left it sit for a while until I was ready to make a second attempt at a repair.

This time I tried a different approach.  I got out an angle grinder and ground down the edge and the rough spots created by my first repair job.  Where once I had a big jutting lip in the middle of the ball, I now have a smooth edge.  Although the edge shows the scars of grinding, I think that once the ball is covered with mosaic tiles and grout it will be barely noticeable.  The top of the ball is a little flatter than it ought to be but I think it will be the defacto bottom of the ball.  So the angle grinder worked.  If you should use it to work on your Hypertufa (or any other project for that matter) be sure to wear eye protection, ear plugs, and a dust mask.

We should be in for a few days of nice weather, so I hope to have the photos of different types of wood burning tips on the Celtic Knot Work next blog post.

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.


 

Stacked Hypertufa Garden Art

Painted stacked Hypertufa balls.

Last week I blogged that I was finishing up some partially completed projects.  One of them was to paint a project that I had made earlier in the year.  Earlier in the year I had cast some hypertufa spheres.  When the molds were filled, I had some hypertufa mix left over.  I decided that I would make make balls out of them, molding them by hand.  I thought that possibly I could make some decorative object with them.  At the time I really did not have a fully thought out idea, but it was either make something with it or throw the stuff in the trash.  So here is my project made from left over Hypertufa.

Tried to paint to look like granite and marble.

Trying for moss covered look on some.

I guess that I should begin by explaining Hypertufa.  It is a mix of concrete, portland cement, and vermiculite.  It is generally mixed with water as you would if mixing concrete.  The good thing about Hypertufa is that it is much lighter than concrete.  For example, a ten inch diameter sphere made of Hypertufa will way somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty to twenty-five pounds where a concrete sphere of that size would weigh close to ninety pounds.  If you would like to view my mixing proportions and comments on making and casting with Hypertufa, please read by blog posts dated from April 27th, 2014 through May 14, 2014 on this blog.  The actual blog address is folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com
You can get to those dates by clicking on the month, which is on the right hand side of the

Before the balls were painted.

page.

Anyway, I made the small Hypertufa balls by patting them with gloved hands.  I left them to dry.  The small balls did not stay spherical.  The balls flattened on the bottom.  So I now had flattened balls.  Since the bottom was more or less flat, I decided to stack them up as you sometimes see rocks stacked in a Zen garden.  You could more or less get them to stay balanced with a little patience.  But why worry about them falling over every time you weed the garden?  If I could find a way to make them stay in place permanently then I would not have to spend time restacking them every time they were knocked over.  I
just happend to have the very thing, some pre-mixed thin set mortar.  You guessed it: I had it left over from another project.  The mortar held the stacked stones in place.  One of the stacked stones was overbalanced, and I had to break it apart and re-mortar it, but that was essentially my fault that I did not make sure what it check it as closely as I should have.  Because of that, I will have to go back and touch up one section.

I had stacked the balls early because I was unsure whether the mortar was going to work on this project or not.  It did.  Even if I had painted the balls first, I would still have to paint the mortar in between, so I am not sure that it would be better that way.  You can see the color of the thin-set mortar between the two balls where I made the repair.  Also, the hold might have ended up against the paint, you only have a hold on the coat of paint rather than the hypertufa.   So I can't really say that would be any better.

Anyway, I learned some useful information to pass on in regard to painting Hypertufa.  It is rough like cement.  I tried both liquid craft paints and heavier (student grade) acrylic artist paints.  Their different characteristics played out differently on Hypertufa.  The liquid paints were able to get into smaller areas easily, while the thicker artists paints generally stayed on the surface.  I found that I could get a more granular look to the balls if I painted first with a liquid paint base coat and then brushed a thicker paint coat over top of it.  I had fun experimenting with different techniques of dabbing on dots, smearing, and dry brushing on the paints.  Some I tried to make look like specific types of rock such as granite, basalt,  or marble.  Others I tried to make look as if they were moss colored.  It was fun.

I had hoped to show pictures of them sitting out in the garden, but it has been raining for three days.  Sometimes it has only been drizzle or fog.  Other times it was pouring rain.  This is part of that winter storm that has made a mess of things all throughout the South.  I'm really glad it is only rain. 
All in all, it has been too cold and wet to get outside.  So today's pictures of them is just on my worktable.  I will shop pic of them in the garden sooner or later.

Working on Older Projects - Photos

Stacked Hypertufa balls.

So earlier this year I was working on some Hypertufa spheres.  At the time, my husband and I were doing some major repairs to our home.  The Hypertufa spheres were cast in concrete, but that is as far as they were finished.

It is actually okay to leave the concrete spheres out year round.  They will eventually develop a patina.  It is also fun to decorate the spheres with varying media.  It all just depends on what you want to do with the sphere.  I'm thinking about painting some of the spheres.  I figure that I will start with some of the smaller ones and see how it goes before taking on a larger sphere. 

A piece cast from an old light globe.

I had some leftover Hypertufa after I made the spheres so I made some round(ish) balls.  I stacked the balls and glued them together with some thin-set mortar.  They look like stacked stones that you might see in a garden.  My intention was to paint them to look more like actual rocks.  And that is where that project has sat for some time as I became busy with other projects.  So here at the end of the year, I'm trying to finish them up so I can start the new year with all the old projects completed. 

Right now they are plain Hypertufa and don't look all that interesting.  I'm thinking that paint will add a bit of interest.  I plan to give the Hypertufa a base coat of Gesso, then a base coat of gray, and after that paint them with sponges to make them look like different types of rock.  Most likely they will look like granite, marble, basalt, and sandstone.  But who knows what will come about when the creative juices start flowing.

Waxing Lyrical Over Things Spherical

Zum balls with essential oils.

Last blog post I showed my completed Diorama.  Now I am on to new projects.   I have had a few waiting in the wings while my last two dioramas were in production. For my next project I am returning to one of my favorite cold weather projects a gazing ball.  I create gazing balls in the winter in anticipation of seeing them gracing the flower garden in the Spring.  Most of my gazing balls were completed before I began this blog.  This time I will be able to show the project step by step with photos and comments on the process as it progresses.  But before I can begin, I have to make trips out to the hardware store and the glass store.  So the project will begin shortly.

Lead crystal, quartz, and jet balls

In the mean time, I wanted to blog about my long term love of spheres.  Some people collect cars, others, matchbooks; in fact you can pretty much find a collector of just about any object under the sun.  Spheres are one of my collecting passions.  As with most collectors, it is all about the hunt.  No matter how many you have, the satisfaction is finding that next unique piece.

Various rock spheres.

I don't know that there is any deep psychological meaning to spheres, but I can say that wanting to have spheres is one of my very early memories.  I doubt that I was much older than four or five.  I used to walk with my grandparents to a little store a few blocks away.  On the way to the store, a house had spheres cut from white chalk.  There were four of them, one on each front corner of the property and one on each side of the walk leading to the house.  They were very white naturally.  They did not do anything accept sit there, but I can remember wishing I had some.  (The next house or so down had a sundial nestled among the flowers in the garden.  I was fascinated that you could tell time by the sun also, but I only have one sundial.)  Anyway, that is how far back my liking spheres goes.  And when I grew older, I started buying them, if I happened to see one that caught my eye.  I never found any spheres made from of chalk though. 

Crystal decanter top.

My latest acquisition came about this month while
Christmas shopping.  I walked into a little store that sells aromatherapy products, essential oils, creams and lotions.  They had these neat little wooden spheres that

Round glass and grout.

had been saturated in essential oils of frankincense and myrrh.  The suggested use was that you pop a ball into a drawer or in your car and allow them to scent the area.  When they run out of scent, you can rub or soak them in the essential oils to refresh them.  Instead of placing them individually in drawers, I put mine in a little bowl in my studio.  Five of them in one place was a bit much for the first few days.  The entire upstairs was scented with frankincense and myrrh.  In case anyone is interested in looking for the product, they are called  Zum Balls.  At the place I shopped, they only came scented in frankincense and myrrh.    They carried soaps and wand air fresheners in the same scent.  I do not know if they items come in other essential oils.  At least they did not have any other scents at the store.

Iridescent glass and grout.

I also have some crystal balls.  They are shown in the second picture The two larger balls are lead crystal.  The largest one is not exactly a sphere as it has a flattened bottom.  The two smaller milky looking ones are genuine quartz crystal balls.  I don't know if genuine quartz is getting harder to find, or if there is just a larger market for quartz, but the price on quartz crystal balls has doubled since I purchased them.  I was at a Gem and Mineral Show recently, but chose not to purchase another because the quartz balls in that size were $70.00 dollars and up.  Some of the spheres in other types of minerals were well over a hundred dollars.  I collect, but I also have a budget.  The small black ball is Jet, which is a form of petrified wood.

Stained glass and resin grout.

The third picture shows some of my spheres in other minerals.  The larger ones are Jasper.  The two smaller ones are lapis lazuli and snowflake obsidian.  I don't purchase them very often because that is a considerable amount of money tied up in little pieces of rock.  However, you never know when you might run across one at a yard or estate sale.  Maybe I'll be adding to that collection.  The people at the lapidary shop tell me that the egg shape is more collectable, and I do run into them more frequently.  Yes, I have a few of those too.  I prefer the natural color ones to one that have been dyed.

Oblong glass and clear resin for grout.

To be fair, the collection of inflatable spheres are there for other than collecting.  The larger two are used for exercise.  I also sometimes sit on the large ball rather than sit on a chair when I am sitting at my desk. I wish I had purchased a larger size though.  I can't type on the computer when I am sitting on the ball because it sits a few inches too low to make typing comfortable.  I have plans to use the two smaller balls in future art projects.  Until then, they serve as amusement for visiting children.  Stay tuned in, the balls will make it into art projects sometime soon.

Hypertufa balls.

Other spherical things have made it into home decor.  I have three decanters with spherical tops on them.  (I only photographed one.  Even the ends on my living room curtain rods are crystal balls, but I did not photograph them.  I also have a globe. I was thinking about taking it apart to use as a base for a gazing ball, but a bowling ball came my way, so that is now saved for another project.  The globe might end up remaining on its stand but covered in stained glass.  That would make an interesting display piece.

And finally, there are my stained glass gazing balls.  During the summer I put them outside.  Once the weather turns cold I bring them inside.  Some people have said that water can get into small fissures and freeze causing the  ball to crack.  Others have said that they leave them outside in winter and have had no problems.  They are a lot of work to make, so I bring them inside.  Why take chances?  In the winter, they sit in various spots in the living room.

I have also made a couple of balls out of hypertufa.  I tried different casting methods with each one.
  At this point it is undecorated.  That ball could be left outside all year in its natural state.  I keep thinking I am going to paint it, but so far I have not had the time.  I expect that if  left it outside, it would develop an interesting patina on its own.  I have even read that if you treat them with vinegar to remove change the Ph level that you can get moss to grow on them.  So many projects, so little time.

Anyway, my next few projects are going to be spheres in varying mediums.  I have some interesting things planned, so check back regularly.  I should have some new photos on Sunday.

Also, a heads up on a schedule change.  After the first of the year, I will be posting blogs on Sundays and Thursdays rather than Sundays and Wednesdays.  My husband started working from home on Wednesdays this year.  Unfortunately, Windows updates come on Tuesdays.  If the updates were posted after I get off the computer then I don't get them until Wednesday morning.  What has been happening is that on Wednesday morning his computer and my computer end up trying to download  the updates at the same time and it slows everything else down. In order for him to work, I have to postpone blogging until so late in the day that it is causing a schedule conflict in my day.  Because of this, I have decided to try blogging on Thursdays after the first of the year.  Maybe it will be better, maybe not.  I'll see how it goes.


 

Hypertufa Spheres - Part 5

Balanced Hypertufa balls.

I've been blogging about making Hypertufa spheres and what I did with the leftover Hypertufa. I had used anything I had available for a mold, and I still had a bit left.   I decided to make some hand rolled balls of Hypertufa.  I knew they would flatten out on the bottom because they would be sitting on something flat, but that was not really an issue since I was just doing something with the end of the leftovers.

Painted with heat set paints.

My first plan was to paint them to test if they could be painted with the heat set in the oven glass paints.  I have saved a couple for that purpose.  I used these paints on some stepping stones and the color have barely faded even though the stepping stones have been outside for years.  I use a dedicated toaster oven for this.  I am not sure if the heat in the oven paints will work for this project because I have concerns that the peat moss could ignite.  The oven temperature is low; the temperature is only 200 degrees Fahrenheit, so there is some possibility that it will work.  I'll let you know when I get that far.  This is definitely an outdoor experiment with a fire extinguisher handy.

Then I had another inspiration for the other Hypertufa balls.  I have seen from time to time artfully stacked stones.  Some of the stacked stones are actually balanced.  Other stacked stones have holes drilled through them and have rods to help them stay in place.  Since I have an abundance of premixed thin set mortar, I decided to dab a bit of mortar on each one and stack them like the stones.  For some reason, my husband was convinced that this was not going to work.  Guess what, it worked.  Once I can get back into my studio, I'm going to paint them to look like rocks.   If my heat setting experiments work, I may to heat them in the oven.  I am pretty sure one of them is short enough to fit.  If they fall apart, I have a place for them.  Our shed has a drip line from rain falling from the roof.  Our property is so steep in the back that we have a problem with erosion in this area.  It is covered with rock to help keep erosion to a minimum.  I'll just add these "rocks" to the other rocks. 

The blog platform is starting to give me trouble uploading photos and where the paragraphs should be placed, so there is more text below
the photos.  I'm not sure why it acts up, but
once it starts, there is no getting things right.
The platform is getting so wonky that it started
removing the photos when I started to type this.
It would not let me reposition the photos or move the text. Sorry about the messy look of the blog post today.

Hickroy heartwood laminate.

Just to give regular readers an update on the remodel after plumbing crisis: we have reached the half-way point.  The den and hallway have been painted, the new floor has been laid, and the molding and trim are now back in place.  The laminate we chose for flooring is quite different from what was down there before.  Reclaimed barn board is very hot in decorating themes right now.  We chose a laminate that looks like reclaimed barn board made from heart wood of Hickory.  It has simulated nail holes and knots, and even has slightly raised areas and beveled edges on the planks,so it feel like you are walking on planks rather than a flat even floor.  We really would have preferred a slightly lighter floor, but this is what the manufacturers are making at the moment.  Most of the other flooring in the stores was much darker.  One photo is of the long sweep down the hall.  The other photo is a close up of the flooring, so you can see how different one plank is from another.  We have not yet had a chance to clean up yet.  The sofa had to stay in the room covered, because it was so heavy that we could barely move it. 

This week we will be starting on the large bedroom.  The old floor has already been taken up in that area.  The company doing the remediation after the damage took the old flooring away and had steam cleaned the concrete.  After Bill and I laid the new concrete we cleaned the floor and walls again because of all the concrete dust.  We will paint and then lay the new floor and add new baseboard
in that room.

Hypertufa Spheres - Part 4

Mold was a light fixture globe.

Today's blog is not exactly a Hypertufa sphere, but it is sphere-ish.  As I blogged about a couple of posts ago, I had a lot of extra Hypertufa left over after I cast the second half-sphere in the concrete mold.  Having already filled my available plastic ball as a mold, I decided to try another experiment of something I read on the internet.  I decided to try using a glass globe as a mold. 

Filed 5-11-2014

This type of mold is a one off.  You have to break it to get your object out of it.  You spray the mold with Pam cooing spray; then fill it with the Hypertufa Mix.  As with the plastic ball mold for last week, I had let it set in the closed plastic bag for a week rather than the one day most internet sites suggested. This was mainly due to bad weather and being busy with home repairs.

For Sale sign almost hidden.

The first part of getting ready to remove the mold is to don eye protection and heavy gloves.  Once ready to remove the mold, I stuck it into a heavy duty construction bag, and smacked it firmly with a hammer in several spots to break the glass.  (The eye protection is important, a few pieces of broken glass did come flying out of the bag.)  I had to take the thing out to examine it a couple of times to look at it to make sure that all the glass was off, so the gloves were handy too.  All in all, the glass came off without too much trouble.  I was surprised to find that the Hypertufa had picked up the detail of the floral motif.  I had thought that it was only on the outside of the mold.  I can see this opening up all sorts of possibilities for garden art from thrift store finds.

It is Sunday, so that means it is field project day.  The weeds in the field are really taking off.  They have almost covered that pesky for sale sign that popped up in the field.  The temperature was 64 degrees Fahrenheit and the winds were calm.  The picture was taken a little early this morning at 8:10 am.  I have to get back to work on the home
repairs.

An update on the plumbing disaster:  Bill and I completed laying the floor yesterday.  We had optimistically hoped to complete it last Sunday, but it really was a two day job.   It took two ten hour days to lay the den and hallway.  Today we are putting in the baseboard and trim.  At that point we will have completed fifty percent of the renovation after the plumbing disaster.  I'll post a picture of the floor on Wednesday.  I have not taken one of it yet.  By the time we finished we were too tired to do anything.

Hypertufa Spheres- Part 3

Cast as half-spheres and mortared together.

Child's ball was used as a mold.

Today I'm posting the first photos of my Hypertufa (pronounced Hyper-too-fuh) spheres.  I've learned a lot from making the spheres, and I hope you can learn from my experiences.  It was not a difficult project, but there are some things that are worth knowing before you get started.  Before beginning this project I had read a number of articles and posts around the web.  I found a bit of useful information on each site, but not a site that had all the information in one place.  I hope that people who view this site will be able to get a lot of the information here that I had to search all over the web for.  And of course, I've learned from my mistakes, so there is always something to add in that area.

The first picture is of the ball made from the ten inch diameter half-sphere concrete mold.   It is cast in two parts and then put together using thin set mortar.  The Hypertufa mix I used was 1 part Portland cement to 1.5 parts Pete Moss, and 1.5 parts Vermiculite.  The mold is sprayed with Pam cooking spray for a mold release.  I mixed this mixture with acrylic liquid Mortar Ad Mix and water.  The first half-sphere had a little too much water in it.  It allowed a little of the cement mixture to leak out underneath the mold when it was flipped over, resulting in a slight lip forming on the ball.  I could have removed it easily using a putty knife or razor scraper if I had dealt with it after it had sat in plastic for a week.  At this point, I'll probably remove it with an Angle Grinder.  One of these days I'll get around to it. 

The Hypertufa mixture is much lighter than using cement.  On one website, someone had calculated the weight of this ten inch mold using concrete.  That ball weighed in at ninety pounds.  I weighed my Hypertufa ball yesterday.  It only weighed twenty pounds.  That is a workable weight.  The half-sphere mold would only weigh ten pounds, so it is easy to flip it over.   A twenty pound ball is easily lifted.

You can see a center line where I stuck it together with the Thin Set Mortar.  I count this as one of my mistakes.  I purchased a bucket of premixed Thin Set Mortar.  I thought it would be easier to use it on two counts.  First, I would not have to find another bucket to store the rest of the remaining mortar.  At this point, I would have had to purchase one.  The second consideration was that by using premixed Thin Set Mortar that I would have less clean up, as I would not have to scrub out the mixing trough.   Well, there was less clean up because I did not have to clean the trough, but using that premixed mortar was a real mess.  It had so much plasticizer already mixed in it that the mortar was like tar.  It was sticky and stringy and difficult to use.  It did not clean off the ball well.  (One of the web sites had said that the mortar
wiped off easily with using regular tissues.  It might have if I had not used this plasticized premixed stuff.)    Because the mortar mix was so sticky, I did not do the best job of getting the rim completely smooth.  The mortar was sticking to the ball, everything I had on, and everything it touched.  I finally decided to quit while I was ahead.  I had used a silicone spatula to spread the mortar and the stuff did wash off that easily.  However, I ended up throwing my rubber gloves away.  The mortar would not wash off of them at all.

The ten inch diameter mold is a true sphere shape.  It rolls very easily.  When you get ready to mortar the halves together, make sure that you have the half-sphere braced well so that it won't be rolling around while you are adding the other half.  Because it rolls so easily, the slightest imbalance is going to cause the top half to slide around on top of the mortar.  I had to keep moving it back into place until I had the ball balanced just right.  In other circumstances, I would probably have done a better job of it.  In the middle of the recovery from the plumbing disaster that befell my home, some of the things that I might have used to make the job easier were inaccessible and I was working in less a than ideal place.

As it is, this ball could stay outside all year.  I've read that if you treat it with a white vinegar and water solution to remove alkalinity that it could be encouraged to have moss grow on it.  This ball could also be used as the base of a mosaic gazing ball.  I would recommend bringing it inside in freezing weather if you add tiles and grout.  Or, the ball could be painted. 

I had some extra mix left over, so I experimented with another method of making a Hypertufa ball.  This ball used a child's ball as a mold.  I purchased this ball at Walmart.  Right now they are everywhere, but as soon as they sell out you won't see anymore for months.  So buy them now if you want them.  I don't have a picture of the ball itself, but it was the size is about eight inches in diameter when purchased, but the material is stretchy, so after the air was let out it became significantly smaller.  It made a ball somewhere between five and six inches in diameter. You cut a hole in the top large enough to get your hand into so you can add the hypertufa.  (Note, once you cut the ball, it will reduce in diameter. as it deflates.) Spray the inside of the ball with Pam cooking spray as a mold release.   Add a little hypertufa tap it down firmly.  If it is not firm, it will leave air pockets that are voids in the ball.  Fill it full, seal the ball in a plastic bag.  On the internet, it said to leave the ball nestled in sand to help keep it from flattening out on the bottom.  (See last Sunday's blog post for a picture of the ball nestled in a bucket of shavings.)I did not have sand, but I had wood shavings, so I used that instead.  For the most part, it worked.  The bottom was slightly flattened, but not so much that you would notice without a close inspection.  The opening at the top was more problematic.  It was hard to get it completely rounded. 

I was concerned that the  top of the ball would stick into the concrete mix and not come off, but that did not happen.  What did happen was that the ball formed a slight peak at the top.  This had to be shaved off once the ball came out of the mold.  You can still see a slight circle around the ball in the second picture.  I used a putty knife to shave the excess concrete from the ball. 

Again, there is something to be learned from a mistake.  From my reading on the internet, the instructions for making these balls said leave them in the mold for one day and then remove the mold them and let them sit in plastic for a week.  That is exactly what I did for the 10 inch diameter sphere mold.  However, with the mold created from a child's ball, that is not how it worked out.  Due to pouring rain and trying to get things back into some semblance of order after the plumbing disaster (see previous posts for info on that), this mold set in the plastic bag for a week.  I feared that this part of the project would be a total loss.  As it turns out, it was not. 

Once I was able to get to work on the mold, I cut into the top edge of the rubber ball.  Once started, the ball pealed away in a spiral around the concrete ball.  The ball was still quite moist from being sealed in a plastic bag.  I was able to use a putty knife to pare down the part of the ball that was above the top of the ball mold.  It was firmer than if I had tried to take it out after only one day.  I count this as a good thing, because some people had said that sometimes their balls fell apart when trying to remove them from the mold.  So, this was a happy accident that has added something to the conversation.   Even after leaving it in this type of mold for a week, it was no problem whatsoever to unmold it or to shave down the raised areas. 

Due to the mold having to sit on something, it is not a true sphere. It is somewhat flattened on the bottom.  However, it is not so badly flattened that the casual observer would pay much attention to it.

This post is getting long, so I will blog about the other experimental molds on Sunday.

Hypertufa - Part 2 Garden Art

Molds wrapped in plastic to cure.

First half of the sphere.

In my last blog post, I blogged about casting the first half-sphere for making a concrete sphere for garden art.  Since then, I cast the second hemisphere, pretty much as I cast the first one.  Funny story, on this.  As I blogged last time, I had underestimated how much material I would need to fill the mold.  It only came out right because I had added too much water.  I had to add more Portland cement, Pete moss, and Vermiculite in order to make it the right density.  (See Sunday's blog post for the proportions.) Unfortunately, I was more focused on getting the mixture to the right consistency, and was not paying attention to how much more material I added.  So, when I made the mix this time, I did not know exactly how much to mix.  And here in lies the tale.

Stuffed ball nestled in shavings.

It is better to have too much than too little, so I mixed almost twice as much as last time.  It was a bit much.  I filled my half sphere mold, and there was lots of Hypertufa left over.  I did not want to dump it on the property, and my husband would not thank me for making him take a big blob of concrete to the dump, so I ended up doing a little experimenting with some other types of molds.  I had read on the internet that some people used glass globes from light fixtures for making concrete molds and that others had cut open children's balls and filled them with the hypertufa.  Here was my opportunity to try them out.

As it happened, we replace the front porch light at the cabin on our trip the week before.  I had brought the glass globe home to put in the pile to donate to the thrift shop.  So it became a mold.  I sprayed it with cooking spray and filled it with hypertufa.  The problem with this type of mold is that you can only use it once.  You have to break up the glass to unmold the object.  This is really only cost effective if you happen to have the globe or can find one at a thrift store.  Then the mold was put into a plastic bag and left to set up.  Put the glass in a heavy construction type trash bag before breaking it to contain the glass.  Wear heavy gloves and eye protection too when you are ready to remove the mold.

I also had a child's ball.  I cut that open and filled it with hypertufa.  Instructions on the internet said to nestle the ball in sand to keep it from deforming.  The bottom will flatten out if left on a hard surface.  I did not have any sand, but I did have a bucket of wood shavings.  (My husband had saved them from some project.  He keeps them in a bucket and when we want to start a fire in the fireplace, he wraps a couple of handfuls of the shavings in a piece of newspaper and uses it as kindling.  It works.)  Anyway, there was this bucket of wood shavings and I had a ball filled with hypertufa wrapped up in a plastic bag, so it seemed like it was the best thing that was available for supporting the ball.  So that was what I used as a support.  People posting on the internet have reported mixed results with this technique.  Some people have had good results, others have reported that their balls ended up being some weird spheroid shape.  I'll let you know what happens on this. 

I still had some hypertufa left after all this.  I pulled a plastic container out of recycle and filled it.  As I was filling it I realized that this would be difficult to unmold, because it had ridges in it.  I don't know how it will turn out.  It may work, or it may not. 

There was still some hypertufa left, so I decided I would just roll it into balls by hand.  I knew that they would flatten on the bottom because I had nothing soft to seat them while they set up.  In this case I am okay with that.  I want to use them for experimenting with enamel glass paints that are heat set in the oven.  I have a small toaster oven that is dedicated to my craft projects.  However, my big spheres are too large for the toaster oven.  Before I invested in a dedicated roasting oven, I thought it would be worthwhile to try out a few small painted balls in the toaster oven to see if it was going to work.  The paints heat at 200 degrees (Fahrenheit) to set the enamel.  I have used this method on some of my concrete stepping stones and the paint has lasted outside for years.  I guess some of them ha, butve been out at least nine years.  The red paint is just now starting to fade a little, but the other colors are still bright.  My concern here is that the hypertufa has Pete moss in it.  I don't think it will ignite at that low of a temperature, but there is that potential.  This is definitely an outside project with a fire extinguisher handy.  The small flattened balls will allow me to experiment using my existing toaster oven.  If it works, everyone gets a painted paper weight for a gift this year. 

For now, everything is in the shed.  It has been raining heavily for much of the week.  The first photo shows the molds shoved into an open space in the shed.  (Probably the only open space in the shed.)  The second photo is the same photo of the half sphere I showed last week, just to remind everyone what I am aiming for with this project.  The third photo is the child's ball stuffed with Hypertufa.  It will be sealed in plastic as well.  Next post I will show the unmolded items and let you know how the different molds worked.  If I have enough time, I will have the whole sphere cemented together.

While all this has been going on, I have mulled over the problem with the house taking up too much space on the diorama.  I think I have a solution now.  I am waiting to get back into my studio and get to work on it.  I only have to dig it out from a ton of boxes that have been shoved in while we are doing the home repairs.  Soon.

This week Bill stained and varnished all the new baseboard and trim.  I cannot remember if I had blogged earlier that we found mold behind the paneling in the closets.  We had to tear all of that out, treat for mold, and put in new drywall.  He also painted the closets both bedrooms.  When I have not been helping Bill, I have started cleaning the upstairs, starting with the kitchen.  I am on a mission to get rid of some of the excess stuff we have collected while I am cleaning.  I set a rule that I had to take one item to either donate or trash out of each shelf, cabinet, or closet.  I am allowed to throw out more than that, but at least one thing has to go.  I have three bags to go to donate out of the kitchen alone.  Being that this is a destruction/construction clean up as well as Spring cleaning, I am cleaning everything.  Walls, ceiling, windows, blinds, curtains, counters, cabinets, and floor.  Today I am working downstairs.  I have to get the concrete dust washed off the den walls and floor so that room will be ready to paint. 

The cleaning has been kind of a wacky process.  I had to clean the large bedroom first, so we could move everything out of the den.  Although the room is ready for painting, we did not want to paint and then store all the furniture in there because some furniture would be leaning up against the walls.  However, the room had to be cleaned before we moved all the furniture in there.  So that room was cleaned and furniture moved in.  Today I am cleaning the den and hall so they can be painted.  Once they are painted, we will be laying the new flooring in there.  There was no new concrete in that part of the house, so we can go ahead and get that down.  Then the den furniture will be put in place.  Sooner or later, the bedrooms will be painted.  The last thing to go in will be the new laminate in both bedrooms.  We have to wait until the concrete cures before we can put the new flooring down.  I think we will be testing the concrete in another week or two to see if it is dry enough.  The end is not quite in sight yet
, but getting all the concrete dust cleaned up is a big step in getting everything else done.  I am hoping to have the entire house cleaned from top to bottom by the time we get the downstairs finished.  Then you won't be able to pry me out of my studio.  I can't wait to get back to work on my art.

Hypertufa Spheres

Hypertufa half-sphere.

We are still recovering from the plumbing disaster, so I haven't been in my studio.  However, the plumbing disaster has spurred a craft project in a new area: Hypertufa.   I have had an interest in working with the stuff for a while, but had not done so because I would have had to purchase some concrete working items.  Hypertufa (pronounced hyper too fuh)  is a mixture that is similar to concrete, but much lighter.  It is made from a mixture of Portland cement, Pete moss, and Vermiculite or Perlite.  It dries as hard as concrete and is frequently used in making garden ornaments and planters.

Same item, just flipped over.

Field 4-27-2014

How I came to be working on this project in the middle of a disaster recovery is a bit of a story.  I have been wanting to work on a paper mache' project in my studio for some time and was not having much success with the way I was working on it, so I decided to purchase a spherical mold.  I found a half-sphere mold for concrete on sale online at Lowes.  At about the time that I purchased the mold, we had to purchase a concrete mixing tub because we were replacing concrete where they had jack hammered up the floor across two closets, the master bedroom, and the laundry room of our home to repair a plumbing problem.  While we were purchasing the concrete and mixing trough, Bill asked if I wanted to purchase the items we would need for the hypertufa.  So I said sure.  And that is how things got started on this project in the middle of all our home repair project.  It was a diversion to keep us occupied while waiting for the concrete to dry.  Watching concrete dry is akin to watching paint dry, only worse.  It takes about twenty-eight days of curing before we can put down the new laminate flooring.

Field 4-13-2014

I'm documenting my experiences with hypertufa in case anyone is interested in using it to make some garden spheres.  Here is a three question test to see if you really are interested enough in the project to make it worthwhile to go to all the expense.  1.  Would you enjoy vigorously hoeing in your garden while wearing a face mask and eye protection? 2. Do you have a tolerance for garden tools that do not wash completely clean?  3.  How much weight can you lift?  If the first two answers are no and the third answer is not a lot of weight, you might want to hit the reject button on this project now.  If you are still interested, read on.

The Portland cement comes in 90 pound bags.  The Pete Moss is pretty heavy as well.  The vermiculite or perlite is not heavy.  You can probably  have someone load it at the store, but plan on how you can deal with it once you get home.  My husband moved it for me.  My Plan B was to roll it from the edge of the van into a wheelbarrow.  My Plan C was using a bucket and shovel.  You also need to plan on what to do with the rest of the cement, because you are only going to use a small portion of the bag to make a sphere.  The cement comes in a plastic coated bag.  Once you open it, humidity will start to harden it.  We used to buy laundry detergent in forty pound buckets.  We saved the buckets, because you never know when you will need a giant bucket.  I lined some buckets with plastic trash bags, filled them with the remainder of the cement, tied off the bags, and sealed the container with it's tightly fitting lid.    It was either that, or buy a whole lot of concrete molds.

There are a couple of hypertufa recipes out there.  The basic recipe is one part of each: Portland cement, Pete Moss, and either Vermiculite, or Perlite.  The other commonly used recipe is one part of the cement to 1.5 parts of the other two ingredients.  Some people just use water to mix it.  Others use a mixture of water and acrylic ad mix.  Some people add polyester or nylon concrete fibers, but most people say they aren't necessary.  That is a distillation of most of what is on the internet about hypertufa.

Aside from the recipe, a trough, and some tools to mix with, there are a few other things you will need.    Unless you have a workshop dedicated to mixing cement or plaster, you will need to do this outside.  A dust mask and eye protection are essential.  Portland cement is a very fine powder.  It is going into the air while you are measuring it and dumping it into the mixing trough; the slightest breeze will send it wafting up into the air. You will need some waterproof gloves.  Thin latex or vinyl gloves rip easily, so I recommend something like the rubber gloves available in the cleaning section, such as Playtex gloves.  You will also need a release agent for the mold.  Many web sites recommend the original Pam cooking spray.  I used it and it works great.  (A word to the wise:  In some other craft projects I have read that the crafter had used an off brand cooking spray and had not had good results.  The binding agents vary between cooking sprays.  While it may not matter in cooking, it does seem to have an effect on craft projects.)  You also need a board cut to the size of the outer perimeter of your mold, and some plastic trash bags.  So armed with this information, we set about on our hypertufa experiment.

I did not have a plywood board that I could cut to size to cover the mold while it was being flipped over (more on that in a minute).   So rather than purchase a whole sheet of plywood when I only needed a small piece of one, I made a board out of multiple layers of cardboard layered across the grain.  Laying them crosswise to each other added strength.  This cardboard came from a heavy moving box used for packing dinner wear.   The edges of the stack were taped with duct tape, and then the whole thing was covered in duct tape.  I slipped this support into a plastic bag to help keep it dry and tied it off.  Plastic was needed not only to keep the support dry, but also because Hypertufa will not stick to the plastic.  This support worked as well as a board, and was lighter than a board. 

First off, I measured the volume of the half-sphere mold. It held eighteen cups of water.  So I thought I would have the amount figured out of what I needed in materials.  Wrong!  The moss and vermiculite have a lot of air space between the granules.  When the liquid was added it collapsed the air spaces and the volume decreased.  Secondly,  the space between not enough water and too much water is just a hair.  You have to mix in a little liquid with the cement mixture, move it around with a hoe to mix it, then add more water until it is just right.  Of course on my last water addition it was a case of "oops, too much".  So I added more material in each proportion until I no longer had a soggy mud.  As it turned out, it ended up working out that I had just enough to fill the mold once I added the extra material.   For the record, mixing hypertufa is almost as strenuous as mixing concrete.  The material is slightly lighter, but mixing hypertufa is a lot of work.  I was sore the next day.

The mold was sprayed with the Pam Original cooking spray and filled with the hypertufa mix.  The cardboard support with the plastic bag over it was placed on top of the mold, and the mold was flipped over.  (You flip the mold so that you can remove it the next day without disturbing it too much.  It also gives you a flat bottom when you are mortaring the halves  together.)  Then this whole setup was slipped inside of another plastic trash bag, tied off and left for 24 hours.  After twenty-four hours, I removed the mold.  It slipped off easily.   Then the ball is left inside the sealed plastic trash bag for a week.  After that, it can be set outside to dry the rest of the way.   It takes a long time for these half spheres to dry completely.  It is still very wet, even though it has been outside for a week.

In theory, once you removed the mold, you would cast the second mold they next day.  However, we were going out of town, so I could not cast the other one until after we came home.  I did not buy two molds, because of the cost.  The mold I purchased as $29.95 and free shipping.  It is a sturdy hard plastic mold.  I also found a less expensive silicone mold for $15.00, but by the time you paid the shipping costs, bought sand to support the mold and a container to hold the sand, you probably spent close to the same amount.  Anyway, once both pieces are cast and dry, you put them together with thin set mortar mix.  I'll blog more on that once I get that far.

I feel I should also mention the clean up, because that is a lot of work as well.  The concrete we used to patch the floor washed out of the mixing trough much better than the hypertufa.  It may be that the trough was smooth initially, but after it gets nicks and scratches from the mixing implements, things change.  The vermiculite from the hypertufa got into those scratches, and vigorous scrubbing would not remove it all.  We finally settled for getting it as clean as we could.  The concrete also dried on the tools to a certain extent.  The crevices around the handles will never be the same.

Right now, I have one half-sphere setting outside, and the other half-sphere ready to come out of the mold.  I will blog more on my hypertufa sphere once I get it put together.  I want to do some more reading to see if anyone has posted on if or how long they let the pieces cure before they mortar them together.

Today's blog also has a photo for my field project.  I did not take a picture last week because I was out of town.  I am also posting the previous picture so you can see how much difference there has been in two weeks.  So far the farmer has not plowed the field.  The neighborhood is speculating as to whether he is waiting until the frost date, leaving the field fallow, or just not planting anything because he has put the field up for sale.  Time will tell.