You make a beautiful mosaic, grout it, and then the next day there is white powdery streaks running down off of the grout. What a mess! What is this white stuff? How do I get rid of it?? The white stuff is called efflorescence. It happens most often when you apply grout in moist and cool conditions. In my case, I grouted between rains when it was foggy but dry. The fountain showed no signs of white streaks and was sent out on a truck. A few days later I went down to do finishing touches on it and saw this: |
| Those lighter streaks are efflorescence coming off of the grout on the dragonfly mosaic. If this happens to you, don't panic! Head over to the cleaning section of your local drug store and pick up some Lime Away . I'm not sure if other Calcium removing products work, but If they contain similar ingredients they should. Efflorescence is basically Calcium that is leached out of the cement by the grout and surrounding moisture. Pat the white areas with a Lime Away soaked paper towel while wearing gloves. Better yet, just follow the package directions! This case was stubborn and took several passes but finally came off. |
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| Incoming Help: wear gloves! |
Handmade tile swoops and signature tiles in a variety of green glazes. I have a few custom signature tile designs for sale in my Etsy shop, Rebel Tiles
These carefully sized donor tiles were made to size because Laurel True (mosaic maestro magnifico) had left perfect oval holes in her mosaic to put them into later. She sent me some tracing paper sketches and they magically shrunk perfectly to size. Phew! Hooray! These can now be seen in the new Paul Farmer hospital in Mirebelais, Haiti. This is a really great project for a really deserving community. Partners in Health (PIH) offers free healthcare to those in need!
Individually wrapping these tiles ended up taking way too much time. There was 11 benches worth of a 40 word paragraphs all in Haitian kreyol (creole). That's 1,694 characters! After 4 benches worth of wrapping the words for hours, I switched to stacking the tiles and bubble wrapping the stacks. Cool things I learned: kominote=community, and tranbleman=earthquake. The benches Laurel True is making over there are beautiful! I'm sending warm healthy wishes to the wonderful people of Haiti ("Ayiti").
A little odd location wise (behind a tree and electric utility pole) but beautiful nonetheless. This is also my chunkiest, most 3-D poke out mosaic I've ever done! Bottles, figurines, plates, cup handles and the like fill out the sedimentary curving layers of this river themed abstract mosaic. Of course I just had to add glow in the dark stripes along the middle section as outlines.
Here it is with the lights out...
And here's what it looks like during the day. Glow in the dark glass floats my boat. It makes me smile. Keep a look out for my glow in the dark mosaic exhibit later this year!
Down by the waterfront in Barcelona, there is this giant sculpture by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. The gray cement base is taller than me!
