Progress Is Slow But It's Progress!......

Progress is slow but we are making some progress!!!!
The plants and details behing the plants are very tedious work and require hours of time.

As you see the plants are going in slowly and we are cutting hundreds of pieces of glass everyday......

After each glass piece is placed then we look it over and make the necessary changes.
If we don't like it we re-do it over and over again.  We still are not sure what we are going to do about the dirt areas. We are not liking the pebble like glass so we will leave this for last....

This week we ran out of the silvery blue glass and had to go and buy some more so now we are resuming our work on the brush. Brother and Sister Gafare came from Upland this Friday to work on the mosaic with us and Brother Gafare tried his hand on some of the bushes.  He did a great job for a first timer! (Check out his work on the bottom right corner of the pic)

These sisters have been coming several times a week for the afternoon crew. They have been working tirelessly with Kim and I cutting glass, placing the glass, and using their creative skills!

We are hoping to have this mosaic completed in the next two to three weeks.
Then comes the next part to worry about, the installation!
Oh, yeah and then on to the next mosaic!!!!

Update on the Upland Mosaic.....

The first of the two five foot round mosaics that we are making for the Upland Kingdom Hall is starting to take shape. We started forming the tall grasses with different color green glass and these will be carefully filled in with more glass of different shades.
You can see that the hills are starting to take form also in the backround. Different color rectangle shaped glass is being cut to form the rolling hills.

Small rounded pieces of glass are being placed to form the ground and surrounding dirt areas.

The flowers have been redone at least four times until we finally came up with something that we all liked.  We are still not sure of the pebbles surrounding the flowers, these most likely will have a redo also until we perfect our look.

We finally came up with a design that we liked for the cactus. Still working out the dirt areas.

The horizon is looking great! and the hills are taking form.

It is a slow process but with much help from the many talented friends and much patience cutting all of this glass we just might have this one complete by the end of August....

These different color pieces of glass are being hand cut by the friends. They are very time consuming to cut and to make it worst we decided that they were too big so now we are cutting them in half! Double the work and we need so much more!  Help! Anyone who would like to come and cut glass!!!!
Much of this work on the mosaic is the very important task of cutting glass, which is very time consuming but VERY IMPORTANT.
Placing the glass on the design is just one aspect that goes into this mosaic and you can work on a section for hours and then decided that you don't like it and redo it at least four times before you get the right feel....

This little arm of a cactus got a different pattern than the other cactus because it was shaped different and it needed something different.

The hills are taking form...

These cactus were formed by cutting out diamond shapes of glass and insetting these small globs.....

Maggie has been working tirelessly on this section of the mosaic and it is beautiful!!!!

This project has been a lot of work but it has been so enjoyable working with such talented and willing friends.  Everyone is just happy to have a part and are willing to do any task that is asked of them.  Some come to cut glass, some come to clean up, some come to bring food, some come to add their input, some come to just check it out.  So if your in the neighborhood, stop by and check it out!!!

Upland Mosaic In Process.....

Yesterday, we were working full force and all day on a five foot round mosaic that we are making for the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses in Upland California.

This is a picture of the image that we were working on.

This Kingdom Hall use to be an old Coco's Resturant.
The large circle in this photo is where one of the two mosaics that
we are working on will be installed.

We have so many willing volunteers that are helping to work on this piece.
These friends came from Ontario, California.
They have never worked with glass before however they were quick learners!

Maggie here is a pro at creative work and has been a great help on this project.
Here she is placing the glass pieces onto the piece after another sister pre-cut them and grinded them.  Each piece has it's place.

You can see the great detail that goes into a mosaic! Here small pieces of glass carefully cut by our volunteers into various shapes like diamonds, triangles, and long wisps. Then we place them on the piece.

In the horizon, strips of beautiful glass are placed to form  the horizon bed.

Cactus  and cactus flowers are being formed. This is a work in progress because we place the pieces and then another voluteer that is an artist comes in and will come in and re-arrange the pieces to highlight the areas that need shading and highlighting so that it will come to life.
We have a great team of artists that are working to make this a beautiful piece.

More Cactus in progress.....

All of the work in being done in our one car garage.  Yesterday it had to be at least 100 degrees outside and it was warm in the garage even though we had a portable air-conditioner running and two fans, but not one person complained!
We were in our element and enjoying every bit of our day working!

Tina, who is very talented in creative arts was checking out what needed to be done next.
This is a tremendous project for all of us and we are all very greatful to be a part of this!
So I will keep you informed of our progress......
Until Next Week......