Ceramic Letters for Shop Fronts and How to Mosaic an Umbrella Stand

22cm tall letters in free font "off the drugs"

This was supplied to Baviaans tourism for their craft shop sign. The local crafters were going to complete it themselves. The sign was 4m long and about 35cm wide

Ruth's mosaic, using some of my fish and dolphin designs, in stock at the Knysna Pottery House

 Prepare the concrete umbrella stand with bonding liquid. Use the powder tile adhesive with some bonding liquid mixed into it- not the ready mixed kind

The completed umbrella stand

Grout with light grey grout, not white- which will get dirty and look grubby in no time.

Fish Mosaic Platter

The Knysna Pottery House is really a wonderful treasure house of ceramic things.  I needed a quick project  just to get into the swing of things. (And as usual, I am doing a new post about it, before the project is completed. So you might have to come back to this blog later to see the picture of the finished project. Just knowing that I need to update the blog with the completed project, makes me a little more inspired to get on with the job.)

Ruth and Craig Renwick are the two people who should get lots of credit for the Knysna Pottery House- (facebook page) an amazing, work from home, studio arrangement. They are always willing to help but are sometimes short staffed, so you might have to be a bit patient, and be prepared to look into the scratch patch and reject bin for inspiration.  Ruth showed me a ceramic platter, that was glazed underneath only. The top surface all ready for mosaicing.  Perfect!

I chose 3 of my fish tile inserts that the pottery house always has stock of and went home.

I found a box of my glass tile scraps and mirror pieces and started playing around with composition ideas. First, the fish needed to be broken in 3 places to fit the gentle curve of the platter. Otherwise there would have been a weak spot under them. Once I knew I had enough of the colours I wanted, I removed everything off the platter and prepared the surface by applying a coat of bonding liquid to it.

I started sticking down the pieces using the flexible ready mix  white tile glue

I got bored and wrote this blog, and now I have to finish this project.

Fish Mosaic platter in progress

Finished.