Truffle Hearts – Another Flower Pot Project

Posted on February 22, 2011

Long time!!! Happy to be back!… I hope you are also happy to have me back!

The reason why I was silent for so long was because of setting up my mosaic store online, figuring out how things work, considering marketing strategies and all those business-like things.

The truth is I now understand how art and business don’t mix. I know I’m far from being an artist in the true sense of the word, but the reality is that my inspiration and joy of creating new objects has disappeared when having to deal with the pragmatical: what do customers like? how much would they pay? will I get my investment back? is this viable as a business?…

Now, let’s get back to the art of mosaics.

Today I will be telling you about a project that made me discover new things.

Red mosaic tiles, actually orange and any other variations containing red as a pigment, are much more expensive and very hard to find in good material. For this reason, I went to get some large sized ceramic tiles to break up. When I opened the package I saw the width of the tile was simply scary – about 3 centimeters.

For a long time I got discouraged and just left the tiles lie about. However, since the winner of the travel blog competition is a big fan of red, I decided to give it a try (no, she eventually didn’t decide on it in time). By the way, the chance to win a mosaic is still on – most comment on this blog will win the writer a mosaic of their choice (maximum appreciated value at RON 150).

I started breaking the bog tiles into more manageable pieces, a task that is not necessarily easy with very thick ceramic, and ended up having taller rather than wider pieces of ceramic… It looked weird, but I didn’t give up… At this stage I still was unsure of the success of the project…

Next, I came up with the design and started working at it. Actually, ideas and solutions just popped up on their own… So the rim became intentionally crooked and the pieces were thought out of the same shape and size…

Another surprise was the color of the grout. I mixed up reddish with black and I came up with a dark brown, this inspiring me for the name of the piece. Yes, elementary school notions are good to be remembered; otherwise they’ll surprise you – hopefully always pleasantly. 🙂

After having started the coating of the pot (ceramic tile absorbs the moisture from the grout much faster, so be prepared to clean up your piece sooner than with the glass mosaic tiles), I realized the nice effect leaving the top tiles uncovered on the edges would bring. They look like chocolate covered waffle bars. Yum!

The flower pot turned out to have a lot of personality, as a result increasing the clicks on my advertised products and having been requested in a very short while since posting.