Post by peachfront on Jul 22, 2011 16:23:57 GMT -5
OK, the world's slowest stone artist finally produces the long-promised stone mosaic
birdbath. The historic drought has broken in southeast Louisiana, almost single-handedly due
to my efforts on this birdbath. I may consider an offer to visit other states and break YOUR
drought too, because I seem to have this funky little gift for bringing the rain. Be that
as it may, the story begins when 1) I got a bunch of really nifty polished slabettes
in a trade with "Snuffy," and 2) I was guilt-tripped by a Brown Thrasher who was pitifully,
repeatedly, sand bathing in my drought-stricken yard. I don't know if I ever saw a
Brown Thrasher sand-bathe before, but now I have seen it several times. So...no more excuses.
It was time to create Peachfront's scenic stone mosaic birdbath! In addition to Snuffy's
stones, I had a large piece of Picture Jasper with a huge, horrible fracture and all kinds of holes
and saw marks in the lovely picture. We decided to cut up this picture to make the center
portion of the mosaic. I think the blue and green, gives a hint of a distant green island,
maybe viewed from a cave? Or maybe I just have too much imagination. I also wanted to see if
it mattered whether the stone tiles were polished or not. Since they will be underwater, it doesn't
much matter for this project. However, in the future, I vote that it would be best to polish
all of the stone tiles before you go further.
I cut up the stone tiles to some sizes that seemed easy for grabby bird feet and applied the tiles with
a tub/shower adhesive. Grouted with a black sanded grout. Sealed with clear polyurethane and then, ultimately,
with Thompson's waterseal. It took an amazingly long time to go through all of the steps of curing
and waiting and spraying and waiting.
Also, in an added twist, since my husband had never made anything with concrete to hold water
before, he ended up making TWO birdbath bowls. I thought the first one had some pinholes. He patched it,
and then as an experiment, I also made a mosaic in this bowl, only with ceramic, since I wasn't sure
if it would actually hold water. Holy moly, no wonder it took me so long to do this project. That's
right. I somehow ended up making two birdbaths.
Well, today, I did the final test. They BOTH hold water. Hey! I don't need two birdbaths, so I put
the nice stone mosaic in the hummingbird garden, where it is destined to be a true birdbath. I flipped
the ceramic one on its side, so it wouldn't accumulate water and give me two birdbaths to clean, and
placed it as lawn decor at the base of my pecan tree in the front yard. The neighbors may
wonder what it is, but they can't say much, since the house across the way has sprouted about
eight pink plastic lawn flamingoes. They might be winners in the irony sweepstakes, but I'm
the winner on the "what is it?" folk art front. Of course, it's
raining right now, so I don't need even one birdbath, but I'm hoping by the time the fall migration comes,
that I can give you a report of all sorts of nifty warblers that have stopped by for a splash.
This is an easy, direct method stone mosaic project. The serious birdbath creator might have also
created a concrete base for the project, but I haven't got that far yet. I just propped it up
on some old papercrete cubes that were hanging around.
?? 
