Year end crafts and Bye bye 2015

This will be the final post for 2015 before the ships blare their horns to usher in 2016. As the year draws to an end, I think I will put up all the pictures of the crafts that I've done for November and December. My favourites are mosaic-art and willowcraft and of course Christmassy stuff.

A. Mosaic and collage

1. Collage on Slate: mixed media - bits and bobs of old jewellery and paper napkins

2. Glass and tile on wood

3. Mandala Art: Tile, sculpture paste and paper napkin on MDF.

B. Willowcraft

Shopping basket:  Following instructions from a very good book .........

I completed this shopping basket on my own...........

C. Christmassy stuff

1. Fish bowl with candle : Sculpture paste for frost

 

2. Candle with trimmings

3. Hand painted snow men on wood and bottles

4. Table centrepiece

5. Cards

3D cards - the robin card won 3rd prize at the ICA Limerick federation meeting 

12 days of Christmas Cards

and a whole host of other cards....

So, I've come to the end of my last post for 2015. I already have lots of crafts planned out for next year which begins tomorrow. 

2016 HERE I COME!!

A touch of Glass

I've always found glass cutting intimidating. Could it be the sound of glass breaking or the idea of being cut? But glass is so lovely so I was really excited when Nathalie who is running the upcycling class informed me that we could do glass mosaic projects. All I had to do was to bring a jar or bottle.

I brought more than one.

I bought these triangular bottles from a charity shop in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh. I find that there is a great variety of things in charity shops in Northern Ireland and I have not been disappointed.

So Nathalie taught me how to cut coloured 3mm glass into strips and then to clip them into little pieces. These pieces are then glued on to the bottles with PVA.

                                                                    The Rising Sun

                                                                          Flowers

For the one below, I used grout to fill in the gaps so it has a stained glass effect.

Love

The sea gull and the wave

        I bought the following tealight glass holders from the Christmas market in Nenagh last year.
                                                  So I just decorated the sides with broken glass.

           I've made twelve of these little glass jar candles for a special occasion for 12 deserving people.

Mosaic Madness

What do you do with a lovely pot that has been blown down by the wind and is broken beyond repair? Turn it into a piece of art, of course! When Kathleen's prized aquamarine pot suffered great damage, she immediately thought of moi. As usual it was raining, lashes and lashes of it even and she called me to tell me that she had two bags of broken bits in her car and she had parked by the lane, so could I please go down to her car to collect them?

Putting on my mac in a jiffy, I went down to retrieve my loot. We both carried the bags into my house. Suddenly, we had enormous masculine strength. So I gave the bird house and stand a new look.

The bird house was in shambles and the birds decided not to call anymore. So I re-thatched the roof and gave it a coat of Ronseal paint. Daddy bird suffered a mishap during a storm and broke his leg. I decided to give him a new prosthetic leg a.k.a. a popsicle stick.

This is the base of the bird house stand made up of Kathleen's broken pot pieces, grout and glass beads.

Now, I do believe if the birds have taste, they will certainly come a-visiting.

 This was the former bird house stand before the makeover.

Still obsessed with the passion for mosaic creations, I bought these two terracotta pots.

And stuck glass mosaic tiles on the bigger pot.

For the smaller pot I used left over ceramic pieces that I made about 10 years ago!

Now that I'm quite satisfied with my mosaic pieces, I'm moving on to more challenging stuff.......cutting glass and making glass mosaic designs!