Carousel Horse Mosaic Project

I guess that "some day" has finally arrived. I have wanted to do a mosaic carousel horse, almost as long as I have been doing mosaics. Which at this point is close to twelve years. It has been probably seven years since my friend Jandel and I found this painted pony at an estate sale. I have moved twice since I purchased it.  At first it sat in the corner of the living room, then we moved to a much smaller place and it had a spot on my patio. In this current house it has been tucked away in a corner of the basement by the washer and dryer. Today while putting away all the Christmas decorations I decided to drag it out of that corner. It is finally time to do this project - hurrah!!

I have a mosaic bucket list of sorts particularly for big projects. I have more ideas in my head than I have time to do. Often big projects have to wait behind hundreds of little projects because those are the ones that most people can afford. So they wait sometimes for a very long time but they are not forgotten. 

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Since I have not done much in the way of project postings while I was in Massage School. I will take a moment to give you some background into the mosaic technic that I use. I use what is called the direct method. Basically the glass is glued directly to the form or base.  I use glass nippers to cut or rather nip the glass, they have red handles and are in a photo with some nipped mirror glass. They are the main tool that I use. As you may have already guessed, I work with stained glass. Rather than cutting larger pieces and grinding them to the desired shape as one would for a stained glass window. I nip larger pieces of glass down into small glass tiles. I can nip circles, rectangles, triangles, petals, leaves and various other shapes. These shapes are then glued into place and later grouted.

This carousel horse is a more advanced project and will be a bit challenging because it is not a flat surface. As you can see the surfaces have a fair amount of texture and differing levels. Which make gluing and grouting much more difficult due to the un even surfaces the tiles sometimes have trouble adhering.

Sorry this photo is going the wrong direction.

 Here is a close up of what I accomplished today after cleaning up my work space. I will probably allow it to dry and then do the same portion on the other side of the horse. The reason being so I make sure to use the same glass choices.

I have drawers, jars, and boxes of glass in my basement work space. Some of the glass is in larger sheets and a lot of it is already nipped into smaller shapes. It is easy to loose track of the glass that you used earlier in a project. Since this horse needs to match on both sides I will try to do the same parts on each side before moving on to another area.

Since my primary focus at this time in my life is building my massage practice. (I am located in Spokane Washington if you need a massage therapist. ) This project will take a while for me to complete. I will be posting updates as I go along. On the right side of my blog is a follow by e-mail box - when I update this blog my post will be sent to you.

You can see some of my storage drawers

"And the seasons 

they go 'round and 'round

And the painted ponies go up and down

We're captive on the carousel of time

We can't return we can only look behind

From where we came

And go round and round and round

In the circle game."

~ Joni Mitchell