Hanging wedi board and other happy things!

I have finished my latest piece. When I look at this piece it makes me feel…happy. The simple shapes, muted colour palette, mixed materials (I love using slate) and the little glittery bits of broken jewellery all just work so nicely together. And my obsession with swirls continue (I just can’t get away from them). This design was a doodle I did one day about a year ago – its a lovely feeling seeing a doodle turn into something so solid!

My next project is a commission of a Portuguese cockerel and yesterday my order from Mosaic Trader arrived (iridescent tiles, transluscent red millefiori, red mirror – yummy!) so I am ready to play!

The cockerel is on a wedi board base as the piece will move inside to outside during the year. Wedi is totally water resistant material so great for outdoor mosaics. However, you need to create a  hanging system for it otherwise the weight of the tiles will cause any hooks to rip through the polystyrene core. I did this by modifying Nancie Pipgras’ wedi hanging instructions.

I embedded a brass hanging wire (on the front of the piece where I will mosaic) into the wedi by digging a channel, pushing the wire in and then putting cement adhesive over it. The metal re-enforcement rings you can see are rivets (used for fabric) glued into place to form a solid ring of metal for the wire to go through. Voila! It has fully dried now and it is really strong.

The grey, cold rain persists here and the other day I was driving and heard Bill Withers’  “Lovely Day” on the radio. It got me thinking about happy songs. We need things to induce happy feelings when the weather is so persistently grim, don’t you think? Another one of mine is Al Jarreau’s “Mornin”. Great tune and doubly good for its reminder of that great series, Moonlighting (remember that?!). What are your happy songs?