Burrow Owl!

We were all a little worried that this one was going to end up looking like a baby chicken chick. This first photo shows the worry spot. It kind of looks like an egg with feet. However, once the eyebrow and other facial details went on and the grout went in, this thing was/is all owl. They'll be adding the concrete burrow on the back so it's a true burrow owl. Although all the speckling and spots made me think of spotted owls more than once. I had some larger pupil tiles made up for the eyes but they didn't fit the curve as well as these smaller ones did so it looks like he's been woken up during the day. Sarah did the tile work on the beak. She's amazingly detailed and patient. So here's the burrow owl coming it at lucky #7. One more beast to go!

Making hundreds of tiny dot tiles by hand

I'm not normally the kind of person to be overwhelmed by a project's size. But making most of the tiles by hand? I'm starting to go a little crazy here.

The Love Bench!

The Love Bench is almost done. It's going in the garden at Catalyst, see below.

Love Bench

This is the bench I've been working on for Catalyst domestic-violence-services. The have a new facility with a garden where they can grow vegetables and flowers. The bench will go there. I traced my kids hands into wet clay to make the hand tiles and I looked up various ways to say "Love" in different languages. In this pic is Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, French, Romanian, English and Italian.

One kiln-load

999 more to go! I'm stocking up for a big project that lies ahead and I'm crossing my fingers they approve the designs!

Ready for glazing!

*For Ivy*

This is a tile I made for my friend of 18 years. I'm the bull, she's the alligator.

Handmade tiles for a mosaic

Sometimes in a mosaic I want to maintain a realistic look and the tiny details might get lost if I resort to only using tiny tile pieces.  When that is the case, I just make my own tiles.  For the downtown scene that I'm currently working on, I've decided to make many of the small signs myself so the words are still legible from far away.  For the Nubel Theater I made five individual letter tiles.  Unfortunately in the first glaze firing they came out a little too orange so I'm adding another coat of a yellow orange mix on top.  These glazes are different than the first try so they should be more golden.