Pique Assiette Mosaics – Page 3

Showing off some Student Mosaics

Posted on December 17, 2014January 11, 2015 by Helen

Every now and then, it’s nice to show off the work done by the students who take my mosaic classes. Shelley, who had always wanted to do something in mosaic, brought along her friend Vicki. Both were a lot of fun to teach and said they wouldn’t mind me showing their mosaics on my blog.

Although neither of them had a definite project in mind, they were ready to try anything. The type of mosaic I teach is Pique Assiette, basically made from thrift dishes. The shopping class was where they found their projects. Both found wicker tables that just needed Will to cut out a plywood top for.

Shelley found lots of floral dishes that were in colors that all worked well together, but worried that it would all look too busy. Vicki, on the other hand, wasn’t sure about a few black plates with white stripes found in the Bibles for Missions Thrift store. As luck would have it, she then found some great old vintage dishes at home in green. And somehow, as I assured them it would, all of it came together beautifully.

Shelley’s colors and flowers when mixed together with floral bits and solid colors created an overall summery pattern and Vicki’s white striped plates totally worked perfectly and echoed the white wicker table she found.

Mosaic has a way of doing that.

Vicki's Mosaic Table — Vicki’s Mosaic Table

The Rescue of the Little Magazine Stand

Posted on August 14, 2014June 5, 2020 by Helen

I wish I had a “before” photo of this little magazine stand. Somehow, when I decided to start on it, taking photos was not on my mind. The table started out as a piece of furniture found at a garage sale, one of those projects people start, don’t finish and want to get out site.

The sides that held the magazines were missing, the table itself was stripped, badly. And there it sat, sort of forlorn really, almost waiting for a new start. We talk these days about “rescue dogs”, but that day I felt like I needed to rescue this little table. So I brought it home.

The first thing I decided it needed was a mosaic on the top. And luckily, Will made it so easy by routing out most of top to create an area to put mosaic in, so that it would be flush with the top. I chose happy colors for the mosaic.

The next problem was to create new sides for holding the magazines. We looked up the styles, we pondered, we threw some ideas around, but none seemed to work. Then one day I just happened to notice an old wall display shelf, one of those odd ones with little turned spindles between the shelves and we basically cut in half and created two whole new sides for the little table.

In fact the holes that the spindles went through originally, were added to, to become a design element of circles which we carried on with the round wooden feet, made from wooden balls found at a lumber store.

Then it was just a matter of choosing colors. Black with punchy little red round feet just struck me as the answer. Which led to the little red balls on the ends of the new spindles to carry on the theme.

All in all, it has been rescued, reborn and re-created. It looks so much happier than that forlorn little table in the driveway. It almost needs a name. Will says, “How about CoCo? That’s sort of a round and happy name.” So CoCo it is. Now that it’s been rescued, it really needs a new home. It’s now on our new shop on Diggit.

Revisiting the Mosaic in Our Old Kitchen

Posted on August 3, 2014July 7, 2015 by Helen

We recently went on a short trip back to Calgary for a big family get together and while we were there, we did what no one should do. We drove by the old house.

Well, you know you shouldn’t do it, you know that the house will not be the same lovely house you worked on for years. You know, from past experience, that the person who bought it, will not take care of it like you did. And you know what? They really didn’t. It looked wrecked.

Which left me wondering about the kitchen and the mosaic backsplash we made there. Was it still up? What it destroyed by someone who didn’t appreciate the work I put into it? Well better not to know eh?

But it made me find the old photos of the backsplash. Taken back in the pre-digital camera days. Should have taken so many more photos, but in those days you worried about wasting film. How I love digital now!

The backsplash was made in situ, over a long hot Calgary summer. Something I’d never do now. Having to take everything out of the way to cook a few times a day really interrupts the flow of work.

No, now I’d make it in the studio and transfer it into place, glued down on board and screwed onto the wall and then grouted. But I love this mosaic still. If we’d stayed I doubt I would have tired of it.

The design itself was one of those ideas that just strikes you and you must do it. A “river” of blue tile flowing thru an abstract landscape. The tiles were sometimes bits of accidentally broken dishes from the set we used every day so it was what is called a Pique assiette mosaic. The kids never had to worry about breaking a dish, they knew mom would eventually use it in a mosaic. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Oh well, we don’t have that house anymore, which, by the way, had a wonderful studio we built just for us too, now made into another suite by the new owners. And we don’t have the lovely kitchen but we have the photos and the memories. And I’m still very pleased with the design of my very first mosaic back splash.

A Little Mosaic Bunny Box

Posted on July 9, 2014June 14, 2015 by Helen

Or how this box became

This!

Sometimes, when you teach mosaics, you get an idea from a student. And one of my students this spring, decided to do a mosaic box. A Tea Box complete with little teapot ornaments on top. It’s going to look great. Now, I’ve made shrines, pots, trays and wall pieces but, for some odd reason, I’ve never done a box in mosaic and now seemed a good time to try. For two reasons, one, to try it out and see what problems it would present and two, suddenly I had shelves full of ornaments that could be quite useful in a new way. A little collection of bunnies came into my view which also sparked a memory of some really cool “carrot” tiles I’d been saving for some reason. An ah hah moment if ever.

So off to the thrift store for a suitable box. Yes the pic above is blurry, it’s not your eyes. Sorry about that. And then a little playing about with bunnies and placement.

Starting with corners to use the “carrot” tiles. Mapping out the placement of bunnies. And that big patch on the front is for a loverly bunch of ceramic carrots I just happened to have lying around. I just love it when everything comes together.

After many hours of applying bits and pieces of various dishes and tiles, it was time to grout. I left the spaces open to glue on the bunnies and carrots later.

A little close up view of the dishes used. This is a Pique Assiette type of mosaic which in rough translation means “stolen dishes”. I had one tiny little dish that had a map of Wales on it and the colors and texture just seemed to work well with the other dishes.

Had to do a bit of adjusting with the bunnies and after gluing them in place, I mixed up a tiny bit of grout and finished the top.

Oh, I also painted the inside a nice “carroty” orange. Just for a little surprise. The bunnies seem a little surprised at being tipped.

So here they are, all waiting for more carrots.

Always Fun When Students Get Hooked on Mosaics

Posted on July 3, 2014September 11, 2015 by Helen

I’ve given classes to a lot of students over the years and I’ve always enjoyed having a chance to help people create their first Pique Assiette mosaics. Some people come to the first class with a project that they’ve been hoping to do for years and bring dishes they’ve saved just for that purpose. Others just want to try it out and we find dishes and perhaps a table to mosaic at the “Shopping Class”. And I always know that making mosaics won’t always click for everyone the same way it did for me.

Murray Goode's Dragonfly Tray — Murray Goode’s Dragonfly Tray

It’s always a bonus when some of my students keep in touch and send me emails with mosaic projects that they’ve done since those first classes. It’s so much fun to know that I’ve played a little part in getting someone else “hooked” on making mosaics.

Murray Goode's Mosaic coffee table — Murray Goode’s Mosaic coffee table

Murray Goode is one of those people who just clicked with mosaics. I sensed that he was delighted with the medium right away and I enjoyed getting a few emails later with more of his projects. Murray was still working as a school teacher when I first met him, but now he’s retired and finally has really got the time to indulge in this art form.

Murray Goode's Blue Willow Table — Murray Goode’s Blue Willow Table

We were in touch just recently and I discovered that not only is he still making mosaics, but is exhibiting and has his own website too! He has a few pieces being shown at Cabin 12 Restaurant here in Victoria. I’ve picked just a few pieces today to post, but encourage anyone to go to his website to see the work of someone who is really enjoying himself making mosaics. I know I’ll be following his website from now on, just to see what new mosaics he’s created.

Woo hoo, a new theme look and a new Gallery

Posted on June 27, 2014April 3, 2015 by Helen

I’ve been busy lately. Well, to be quite honest, Will and I have been busy with the blog lately. I really need him to keep me from losing patience with software and help with learning how to do things. We wanted a few changes in the blog. For one, the look of it. So we chose a new theme. We find it a bit cleaner looking than the old theme.

And then I discovered a new (to me, anyway) gallery plug in for WordPress called Catablog. Of course, being me, I had to have it. I thought that having a gallery of my mosaic posts would make it so much easier to visually navigate the blog if you were looking for mosaics alone. I wanted anyone to be able to search through the pics of mosaics and just click the title to go to the post about it. So after much fussing and fuming on my part, and dogged determination from both of us, we managed to create the aforementioned gallery. You can find it here.

Or, just click on Mosaic Posts Gallery on the Menu bar above. Enjoy!

A Recycled Post about Recycling for Earth Day

Posted on April 21, 2014June 5, 2020 by Helen

Today is Earth Day or for many Earth Week. I like to think that every day is really Earth Day. In honor of the day, I’ve decided to do a bit of recycling. The following is a post I wrote way back in 2010, but I think it still works. I’d like to share a bit about how to recycle in the garden and even how to use recycled dishes to create art in the garden.

Actually, Recycling, could be the main theme of our lives. Now it’s called thrifting too. We’re a couple of old Hippie artists, who were there for the start of the recycling movement. For us it’s just a way of life. We buy everything used and we also get a lot of “good stuff” as I like to call it, absolutely free. Best price there is. And as I mentioned in other posts, it’s a pretty abundant lifestyle too.

Of course we compost. Every scrap of banana peel, tea bag, coffee ground and egg shell is collected in these recycled coffee bins that I brought home from a job. The tiles on the backsplash behind them are all recycled. In fact every tile was actually free and found at garage sales or from sample boards thrown out by tile stores.

The composter the food scraps go into, was also free. Someone in the neighborhood was tossing it. Our rainbarrel is a recycled drum formerly used for soap.

In the green house, I recycle too. Every pot from years past is saved to be reused, trays are sometimes taped up to plug leaks but are still put to work. These Black eyed Susan vines are sprouting in cookie packaging.

The seeds for the Purple Cone flower, which I am rather impatiently waiting to see sprout, are planted and living under the protection of packaging, which in its previous life housed a cake bought for my birthday a short while ago.

In it’s next use it may become storage for broken dish shards in my studio, like the many, many salad green containers already put to a second use.

Out in the garden we have, now wait a second, I have to mentally count, at least 4 wheelbarrows. Only 3 are shown here. All free or almost free. All recycled. I have an abundance of wheelbarrows you could say. I think they are kind of beautiful, in a sort of colorful, shabby, knocked about and used, way.

Wheelbarrow collection, summerhouseart.com

Now that I’ve reached the garden with my recycling theme, I’d like to show you a few pieces of our garden art. Now maybe art for the garden is an odd sort of theme for Earth Day but a lot of our art is made from recyled materials. The mosaic in the herb garden is a recycled chimney covered in old dishes and tiles.

Mosaic Chimney by Helen and Will Bushell, summerhouseart.com

The stepping stones are all made using recycled dishes and tiles, a type of mosaic art called Pique Assiette. In fact, all of my mosaic artwork is made from recycled dishes, tiles and ornaments. If you would like to see how to make them check my post Creating a Mosaic Stepping Stone Helen’s Way.

And old sink found in, I must admit, unashamedly, a dumpster dive, is home to our succulents.

The chime that Bill fashioned out of an old anniversary cup found at a garage sale and hung with flattened silver cutlery is another recycled artwork. There’s much more art to see on one of my previous posts about garden art called Bill’s Driftwood Chair and Other Garden Art Whimsies.

Wind Chime by Will Bushell, summerhouseart.com

Here is another great little chime that Will made as a gift, with a metal tassel from a chandelier now no more and few beads and pieces of flattened cutlery.

Tassel Chime by Will Bushell, summerhouseart.com

There are so many things that we can recycle and reuse for our gardens from artwork to garden furniture to garden tools and implements. There really is no need to go out and buy new most of the time. I always like to say the world is an abundant place as long as you don’t mind second hand. Not buying new saves resources and cuts pollution. Buying used saves more stuff from ending up in landfills too. And the best thing is getting out and about on the weekends looking for deals at garage sales ( we always plot the most efficient course to save gas), enjoying the sun at a beach on the way from one sale and the next. Life is good. So that’s my little, I hope, upbeat, message in honor of Earth Day. Even the post is recycled.

(BTW, if you’d like to make a comment, just click on the title. It’ll take you to comments….and we do appreciate comments )

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An Abstract Tray

Posted on February 26, 2014January 11, 2015 by Helen

There’s something about trays. They’re easy to find in thrift shops, the ones I like the best are the light weight wooden ones with handles. They’re just the thing for a quick study in mosaic, offering a chance to try out colors or patterns or a new idea. And when finished, they’re so useful. A great way to take hot casserole dishes to parties or haul out your teapot and cups to the patio.

Of course while in thrift shops I’m always trolling for interesting dishes, too. Once I started making Pique Assiette mosaics I never looked at dishes the same way again. I tend to wonder how they will look broken up. I look for a variety of colors, texture and pattern. Sometimes I get really lucky and find a stack of dishes that has it all. And if I’ve got the money, I snap them all up, because when you’re shopping thrifts and garage sales you can’t always come back for more later.

These plates with their lovely colors and textures were one of those lucky finds. I knew I’d always like the patterns and colors and would be able to use them for more than one project. And I knew they’d have wonderful “broken” possibilities.

I could have done the whole tray in just the dishes but I chose to add more blocks of solid color using ordinary tiles in a lovely dark blue and a black. I like abstraction in mosaic, just fitting in pieces where they fit, creating a bit of a balance of colors. It’s a fun, intuitive way to work, with a surprise composition at the end.

Creating Another Beach Pottery Bird Bath (and there’s a movie too!)

Posted on October 25, 2013June 5, 2020 by Helen

Way back in March, we happened to notice that the tides were very low and the idea struck me that we should go out to Sidney and collect some beach pottery. So off we went to the best beach pottery beach and went wild scooping up beach pottery in our little rice bags. Everyone else was looking for glass and overlooked all the lovely pottery. But we had plan for it.

We’d made a bird bath before with pottery and beach glass. Way back when we moved into this house, we’d found, under the laurel hedge, at the back amongst a lot of debris, a birdbath pedestal. The basin or bowl was long gone and we’d put it up in the garden with a plastic bowl on top with a couple of rocks in it. Didn’t look great and the birds loved it. The pedestal had a nice classic shape but the plastic bowl made it ugly.

With this wonderful haul of pottery we both decided to renovate the old ugly birdbath. We started by applying a mosaic of the pottery onto the pedestal. Now I must mention that the real beauty of beach pottery is its smoothness. And to preserve that smoothness, it’s really best not to cut the pieces at all. So each piece has to be searched for, each piece must fit without cutting it to fit. It takes more time but is worth it, just for the fun of being able to slide your hands over the finished mosaic and take in the feel of pottery that’s been tumbled in the ocean for years and years.

And we took our time, working on the sunny summer afternoons, playing rock and jazz on the CD player and taking lots of tea breaks with tea brought out on a favourite mosaic tray.

Once the pedestal was finished we had to think about how to make a basin. Luckily we’d found a perfect glass light fixture at a garage sale and proceeded to use that as a mold for the basin.

If you look at the pedestal you will notice that we were going to have to devise a way for the basin to fit over the round projection on its top. And of course we came up with a simple, and I thought, clever solution. Bill cut a round of wood that was the same size as the projection and we built the cement around it as in the little diagram.

It worked really well. We did have to chisel the glass fixture out the cement but it all worked out.

So next we started to cover the bowl with mosaic. First under the bowl and then the inside of the bowl. Around this time, Callie, our neighbour’s kitten decided to take an interest. She loved to jump on our work table and investigate. She especially liked to push pieces off the table onto the ground. And when she got tired she curled up in an old colander that we’d used to clean pottery. She’s a little character and had us laughing with her antics.

Then finally, we were ready to grout. We did the basin first. We were really pleased with the inside of the bowl and how the undulating lines created with the ridges of the pottery created a great pattern.

One of the things you have to get used to with mosaic is how different it will look with grout. Sometimes I find it a bit disappointing, and have to get used to the look. Here you can see the how the grouted bowl looks against the still ungrouted pedestal. In the end though, I liked the grouted look and actually love how the use of the dark grey-blue grout set off the pieces.

And then, the final photo, the finished bird bath. We love it and this time it only took the birds one day to use it once we put it in place after it had cured.

Beach Pottery Bird Bath Helen and Will Bushell summerhouseart.com — The new Birdbath

And just for fun, every day, as we finished up for the day, we’d take a little movie of the progress. Bill spent some fun time learning how to stitch it altogether into a little video. And then thanks to Kevin McLeod’s music, we posted it on youtube. Ok, it’s a little bumpy and handmade looking but that’s ok. It’s just like the Bird Bath. Hope you enjoy…..

Earth Day Abundance – Recycled Art Supplies

Posted on April 22, 2013August 20, 2015 by Helen

Leading up to Earth day I’ve been signing petitions almost everyday. There’s one or two in my email everyday. I care about all the things I sign petitions for: like no oil tankers on my coast, no nasty pipeline through the forests, saving whales from navy maneuvers, the list goes on and on. So many nasty negative things. But today is Earth Day and I want to talk about being a Positive force and Abundance!

I want to talk about up-cycling and recycling from an artist’s point of view. I want to talk about looking for art supplies. And all I see is ABUNDANCE! For those of you who are artists and are already using ephemera and found objects to make artworks, you know what I’m saying. There is just so much out there and it’s cheap, almost free, just waiting to be reused, with imagination. It’s more than a trend now, it’s more than a movement, it’s become a way of creating for many artists. And that makes me feel so much more optimistic, it’s the balance to all the negatives that I’m signing petitions against everyday.

My way of life, of finding and reusing everything is so rewarding I couldn’t do anything else now. It’s a way of seeing things. For instance a broken favourite egg cup or milk pitcher causes only a moment of regret and then,

well, it will join all the other shards collected in recycled salad containers ( made from recycled plastic) in my studio. Another way to create studio storage.

And one day become a Pique Assiette Mosaic tray like this one with handles made from old silverware.

Although I do not subscribe to magazines, since I get them from the library, I do buy old ones sometimes at garage sales

and they become part of my stock of color supplies for collage birthday and anniversary cards.

Or for playing with, creating colorful collages.

And beads, there are so many beads out there, in thrift stores, and me, the eternal magpie always attracted to color and texture can’t help but collect them in my little recycled boxes.

And the boxes stay under the coffee table and sometimes, when I’m watching a movie I’ll bring them out and string them together into a bracelet or two.

Even old frames are collected, most free or almost free. I also collect old board that we cut up to fit those frames and with a coat of gesso they are ready to paint on, whenever the urge strikes, and I never have to worry about the cost of framing.

So this is my little treatise to Earth Day. My little contribution to saving Her from all the baddies out there. It’s small, but there are a whole lot of artists out there just like us and every bit of positive energy counts in the grand scheme of things, I’m quite sure.