Stained Glass

This year, I got the bright idea to make a few of my gifts to a) satisfy my creative, crafty side that has been neglected for some time, and b) make my small Christmas gift budget go a bit farther. I decided to create a few mosaic items for a few select friends and family. I have not had much experience with mosaics. I think I have made one in my life, and that was a mosaic tile I made at Different Strokes last year. All the materials were placed in front of me, and all I had to do was glue the tiles to a square ceramic tile. A first grader could do it [and probably better than mine turned out..]. But doing a mosaic from start to finish...well, I was heading into a new frontier, where no green eyed gal....uh...named Sarah Jean Hodges....who has a dog named Jasper.....has gone before.

Anyway, I had collected my plethora of supplies way back in November. I think I spent over an hour at Hobby Lobby deliberating and stressing over what supplies I was going to need. I had planned on spending the next month between Thanksgiving and Christmas creating beautiful masterpieces my loved ones would 'ooo' and 'ahh' in amazement over once completed in plenty of time for Christmas. Well, it is the 18th of December, and to be vulnerable and honest, ......I really only began tonight. Let's just say that a couple of my original recipients of Beautiful Mosaic Items By Sarah will now be receiving gifts bought, with great thought and care, from some store and will only be Gift Wrapped By Sarah. However, if I start in January, perhaps those few wonderful people will get their Sarah creations next year for Christmas....

Even starting tonight, I believed I would be able to do a couple of the mosaics. So I got everything I would need moved to the garage and set up on the small folding table I bought at Lowe's specifically for this crafting experience. I had 3 panes of colored glass, a mosaic kit that has all the basic tools and supplies to begin mosaic-ing [including beautiful Italian glass tiles], safety goggles, craft glue, my various items that I want to mosaic [glass candle holders and wooden trays], and a small space heater, which is absolutely essential for crafting in my chilly garage. And that is where things began to turn quite Unfortunate for this Green-Eyed Gal.

There is one bricked step that leads from my house into the garage. I was heading back into the house from the garage for one last item, when I found myself tripping on my house slippers and falling on the step. My right house slipper slipped off my foot, and my right foot, where my big toe meets the ball of my foot, made contact with the corner of above-mentioned brick step. Oh, the pain. Oh, oh the pain. I managed to limp to the bathroom, where I grabbed a Kleenex, then over to the couch to survey the damage, the whole time trying not to cry. I whined for a while holding the tissue to my throbbing injury.

WARNING: ICKY DETAILS TO FOLLOW IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH!!!!

Upon examining my wound, it looked as though it wasn't too bad in the "bleeding profusely" area, so I got up to hobble upstairs to the bathroom for a band-aid. Well, it turns out it was bleeding more profusely than I first assessed. I left a trail of blood drops from the kitchen the first few steps of the stairs. Great. That is just perfect. Now I have to get blood out of the carpet. I try to wrap my now bloody tissue around my foot the best I can and go BACK to the downstairs bathroom for more tissue so I can wrap it some more and try again to go upstairs. At this point I think I am crying a little. Once upstairs I grab the bottle of peroxide, a washcloth, and a hand held mirror, and sit down on the floor to clean the wound. The hand held mirror allowed me to actually get a good look at the wound, just in case you were wondering....

Did you know that not only does peroxide bubble amazingly when it comes into contact with blood, but it also gets really, really warm?? Well, it does. As I was pouring peroxide on my foot and catching the excess with the rag, the rag started getting very warm and foamy. It was kind of cool. Anyway.....I clean my foot, it keeps bleeding a lot, but I ointment it up and slap a band-aid on it. Enough already with the foot! I've got a masterpiece to create!

The art of mosaic takes way too much time when a) one has no experience whatsoever with said art, b) the artist is a perfectionist, and c) the item said artist is attempting to mosaic is curved. The item mentioned is a votive candle holder. The curvature of a votive candle holder is not conducive to keeping broken pieces of glass from slipping once glue is applied and they are stuck to the solid glass of curved candle holder. I kept having to nudge pieces back in place and hold the glass at an angle while blowing on the pieces to hurry the drying process along. I finally stuck to one section and held the glass still until that section dried. I tell you, watching glue dry is even less exciting than watching paint dry. Finally, it was 8:45 and I needed to call it quits for the night.

All in all, I have the rim and 1/2 of one section of a 3 inch high votive candle holder covered in glass. Whoopee. I have that one to finish, 7 more candle holders to apply bits of broken glass to, and all of them to grout. I also have a hurt foot, and I think there are tiny shards of glass in my hands. I am off to a good start. Only 7 days until Christmas. At this rate, I should be done by Groundhog's day, and need to buy stock in bandaids and triple antibiotic ointment.

Until next time......