My Mosaic Phase

I got a new computer at work last week. In preparation I did a little "housekeeping" and cleaned out some personal pictures that had ended up there. I ran across these pictures from what I call "my mosaic phase". I think it was 2003. I showed you a little bit of a broken china mosaic in this post last summer. I made the two tables and a flower pot before I got over it.
The inspiration for this table began simply enough. I found the cast iron pedestal at the Salvation Army store. It had a wood top that was covered with stained white Formica but I loved the base. Now THIS would make a patio table the wind couldn't knock over! I thought I would use use a variety of bright colored broken wall tiles in a simple random pattern. Well, who knew you have to buy the tiles in full cases - that's no fun! I started searching the Internet and found a company that sells a huge variety of these tiny tiles in small quantities. Game on!

Did I say random pattern? Did I say small quantities? In my typical fashion, I complicated it and came up with this not-so-random pattern of my own design. A little ambitious for a first time mosaic but that's the way I roll. I ran out of tiles and had to re-order twice. After about two months and an estimated 10,000 individually nipped and grouted one.at.a.time it was finished at long last. Hmm. Now that I think about it, maybe this table is the reason I got over my mosaic phase! I am happy to report it has held up every bit as well as I thought it would and we have been using it pretty much every day for 8 years now. Sometimes covered with snow, always covered with junk and NEVER tipped over by the wind.

I am hooking up with "Show and Tell Friday" over at My Romantic Home so be sure and stop over and check out some great blogs!

Terrarium Fun

I told you about my terrarium "inspiration" in this post so I thought I'd show you the finished result. Gosh these guys were hard to photograph so I'm posting a few to try and give you a look.

I put gravel in the bottoms so water could drain away from the roots and then added a layer of sifted compost on top of the gravel.

The moss, lichen, fern, sedum and hen and chick (should that be hen OR chick since there's only one??) are all things I took from around my yard.

It's been my experience that moss grows where it wants to grow so time will tell if it will thrive here. I have been putting tops on the terrariums at night to raise the humidity.

These giant snifters didn't come with tops so I use a glass saucer on top of the largest one and I found two small headlight lenses (no kidding!) at the VofA and they fit nicely on the smaller ones. They look kind of cool, too, in a funky headlight kind of way. If everything thrives it won't take long to outgrow these little homes but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I've only got $6 in the whole she-bang and I'm loving them all for the right now.

I have them sitting on this little table next to the hot tub on the patio. I made the mosaic table several years ago. If you look at the first picture you can see the pottery shard mosaic on the top and the bottom edge is decorated with key "fringe". The granddaughter loves to run her hand across the keys and make them jingle. It's a happy sound.