My Mosaic Wall-Easter Island Heads

Most of my mosaic projects have been small and somewhat abstract. After finishing the hands around the world piece, I got ambitious and decided to put some Easter Island heads on the back wall. We’re doing the yard in Tiki decor and I thought this would be a fun touch. It took me a good two weeks to complete this. Keep in mind, I work full time and do volunteer work, and have life stuff, so this wasn’t a solid two weeks of non-stop work. It was just when I could find time. It was probably a good 20 hours though, all told.

I started with sketches to get an idea of shading, I went through a lot of plates from Dollar Tree and the 99 Cent Only Store. I also used a lot of Home Depot and Lowe’s gray floor tile. I used black penny tiles from Lowe’s as well. The hardest part of all of this, besides the sore neck and back and the heat, was that I had to keep going up and down the hill for supplies. I also do a lot of stepping back from a piece to see it from far away and I couldn’t do that without walking up and down the hill. Good thing I have stone steps built into the hill, courtesy of my daughter and future son-in-law.

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Robert and I are just to the left of the left head, for scale. There was a lot of good, gray color before I added the grout. Once I slathered in the white grout, it started to look washed out.

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Once it was fully grouted, I needed to scrub any leftover grout off the black pieces. I went to Home Depot and bought gray grout paint. The floor tile I used for the gray was porous so I had to scrub the gray grout paint off all the tile, piece by piece, with a toothbrush and wet cloth. It was really hot that day and it dried almost immediately. It was so light gray it was almost white so barely made a difference. It helped a little to bring the piece back to life though.

Next I painted around the eyes, forehead and mouth, and outlines with black grout paint. That made a big difference. When the sun went down a little, the contrast came back. A lot of the faded-out illusion was just the blinding sun. It’s pretty far from the backyard so here are closeups of the UFO and Robert and me. Why did I add a UFO you may ask? Why not.

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Here’s our Tiki yard (in progress) at night with the heads (top right of photo) illuminated by our solar spotlight. All the lights you see are solar. We LOVE the solar lights!

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Until my next post, stay creative!

Tracy

My Mosaic Wall – Holding Hands Around the World

Since the wall beside my house is getting full, I decided to start adding mosaics to the back wall, at the top of my hill. I knew it was going to be a large project. It would have to be so we could see it from the patio. Here’s my original sketch. I planned to surround the earth with people holding hands. Looking at the finished product every day (we can see it from the couch in the living room if we scrunch down) reminds me that there’s a lot of love and hope in this world.

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I wanted the people to be uniform size which I would not be able to accomplish unless I bought pieces already cut. I picked up a few containers of these from Amazon. I never measure anything and was relieved in the end that I had just about enough of the little pieces to complete the people circle. For consistency’s sake I decided to use black penny tiles for the heads since I only had blue, black or silver. I like the uniformity of the black heads.

The first day involved smashing a lot of Dollar Tree green plates. Finding green tile is really hard so I rely on Dollar Tree plates, and sometimes The 99 Cent Only Store. In this case I used up all my plates (1st picture) then had to stop for the day. Carrying tile up and down the hill, and trying to kneel and balance among the cacti and gopher holes was physically taxing. Luckily Granola was there to keep me company.

The next day I smashed some new plates. I finished the land masses and started on the water. I had some Dollar Tree blue plates, some small (about 3 inch) mosiac or subway tile from Lowe’s, and some of my friends’ leftover pool tile. I decided to add in a “love ocean” just because. I’m used to doing a whole project in an hour or two and grout it the next day. This was a much larger project and took four days overall.

Day three I used tile adhesive to glue all the people around the earth. I started on the bottom because I knew I’d be too worn out to sit in that position and stretch all the way up by the end. It was a good decision. This step took four hours (straight). Initially I was going to add the people and put yellow tile all around them. But because of the work involved, and how cute they looked on the tile, I decided against it. One thing I hadn’t considered was that if I put adhesive on the back of the pieces and pressed down, there would be extra goop that I needed to clean off. The pieces were small and hard to maneuver so I used a wooden skewer and had to clean up around all the edges, piece by piece, person by person.

By the end, there were 53 little people around the circle. I started with solid colored people but I ran out of matches and the ones on the top are all different colors. Finished product without the grout.

At night a solar spotlight shines on it. It was a lot of work but this is my favorite mosaic so far. I do feel a little bad that we can probably never sell the house now both because I love the wall too much and also because a new owner may not love it at all. Since I plan to be here until I’m dead, I’m not too worried about it and will keep beautifying the concrete.

Here’s to creativity!

-Tracy