Artful Discoveries
On my travels around the internet I often come across really good art and craft ideas, or ideas that really appeal to me, so I’ve decided to start a new occasional series of ‘Artful Discoveries’. Some of these may perhaps be a little more ‘craftful’ than artful, but all are projects that I think are special in some way.
In view of the season, I thought I’d start the series off with a project I came across at Glittering Shards for making these beautiful hanging mosaics using plastic bottle tops. They make lovely tree decorations, and they can be as simple or complex as you like. The original tutorial which I used can be found here.
I varied it slightly, in that I made just one hole in the plastic, and threaded a single piece of wire through, doubled back to form the loop. I also sprayed the lids gold to add a little more bling, though given that lots of milk bottles have red or green lids, this isn’t really necessary. We used beads, sequins and mini mosaic squares to create the designs.
The kids mosaics were rather more random, but they really enjoyed doing them, and wanted to do several. I wasn’t sure whether they weren’t a little too young for it at 6 and 4, but it was lovely to see them taking so much care over their creations. Of course I couldn’t resist having a go myself once the kids were safely out of the way!
PS: Although the Featured Artist series has now finished for the time being, I’m still inviting submissions to the Artful Kids Flickr group, of 2 dimensional artwork by children under 12. There will be a competition over Christmas for the most popular contribution, which you’ll all have the chance to vote on, with the prize being an Artful Kids Gallery Style Poster, so get uploading!
I went to the Glittering Shards tutorial and noticed that her tile adhesive is a lighter color than yours. I like the drama of your darker background color – did you add the color or does the tile adhesive come in different colors?
Oh wow these are stunning!
I actually used tile grout rather than adhesive (there seems to be some overlap between the two) which does come in a limited range of colours, including the black which I used. I tried the white tile adhesive too, but didn’t like the effect as much, and found there was no difference in performance.
What a great job you did! I had an exhibition in the run up to Christmas so we never got to making more (boo hoo!) but I love what you have done and so glad you and kids enjoyed it. Thanks every so much for featuring these. Just to answer the adhesive question – grout and adhesive are different – grout is just a gap filler, has not glue properties (you may find some bits fall out and if that happens just stick them back in with some PVA (craft) glue. Tile adhesive comes in white or grey and I agree the black is more dramatic. What you can do is use white powdered adhesive and mix with water and acrylic black (or whatever!) paint. Mix til its like peanut butter consistency and then use… Hope that helps
Thanks for that – no bits have fallen out yet, perhaps because they are so small, but I did wonder about colouring the adhesive instead. I haven’t seen it in powdered form, so if I do more in future I might try that approach. But I have a large tub of black grout to use first!
Hi Jude
mix some white glue into the grout -that will help too