Grouting...

Over several weeks I grouted a few each day and my friends Helen and Coe came over this week to help me finish! What a huge help... and a relief!  I had planned to use all black grout... then decided that some of them would be best with a lighter color.  I like the combination!!!
All 36 are grouted now! Hooray!   (I have three memorial butterflies to grout...and one more came in for the settlement.. but those will wait a couple of weeks until after the festival! :)

This is the pottery shed as it looks now. We hope to put up the butterflies and dragonflies on Friday of next week!  I'll show you the 'after' pictures then! :)

Working on the butterflies and dragonflies

Well... I've been back and forth about documenting our butterfly/dragonfly project.. and I decided to add a few more things. :)
We have ended up with 36 butterflies and dragonflies!   There are more photos on my Flickr page. Check them out!

We decided to mount them on Hardiboard... and most of it was donated by a nice lady who happened by while we were making the butterflies at the settlement and happened to overhear me say that I might use it!  She had quite a few siding style boards and they are perfect!   I measured each b-fly and d-fly.. marked the boards and Joe cute them to size.   Then I numbered each b-fly and d-fly and the boards that fit them.. and spray painted them all white.   Then my friend Helen came over and we started using Thinset to "glue" the 'flies to the boards.  Goodness... in writing this I realized that I'm leaving out a lot.. like adding boarders to some of the 'lies and extra pieces to others so that they would be filled out and... and.. and...
Here are some photos of the process...

 Aren't they beautiful!!!  :)

Getting started...

I've been fortunate to participate in several cooperative mosaic projects.   Last year I participated in a project by Eve Lynch in Ft. Myers.  She put out a call to mosaic artists worldwide to send mosaic butterflies on mesh to be installed in her "Butterfly Cloud" at the Calusa Nature Center.  What a fantastic project!!! Invited several friends to come over... and we all made butterflies for the project!  

Then... I saw on Facebook that the Colorado Mosaic Artists group had a similar project!   Their project "On a Wing and a Prayer" was another round of inspiration and I wanted to try something in our area.

We are involved in the music part of the festivals at the Pioneer Settlement for the Creative Arts in Barberville, FL... and I'd wanted to do some sort of mosaic there so we decided to make a community butterfly project... encourage visitors to help...  and install them on the pottery building for all to share! 

Several weeks ago the settlement had it's annual open house so they set up a tent and table for me.. and I took lots of "stuff" for folks to choose from... set up the patterns under mesh... and jumped in!  :)
Everyone did a GREAT job... and we made almost 30 butterflies that day!!!
Aren't they beautiful!!!