Month: December 2024

Gingerbread christmas tree, family project

Gingerbread christmas tree, family project by 6 (kids and adults). All scraps, and fun, maybe cute, but certainly a quick afternoon and touchup project.


All this stems from a gingerbread house from 37 years ago when my then 6 year old son said…. “this is the best day of my life”.  It is a tradition that has paused many times, but some grandkids are now participating.  This was the first ever time I have constructed a base looking like a “tree”, more practice is needed.  LOL. Prototypes are a good place for improvement.  And a little more in the way of structural design elements would have helped guide this into a more orderly tree.  Previoius gingerbread houses had rooves and towers and windows which were obvious places for kids and adults to add candy and cookie, this was a pretty much blank slate and therefor shows little coordination in effort.

 

Mosaic – large strawberry pot

Mosaic – large strawberry pot, all tesserae are from the “trash, or second hand store, or Building Value store here in Cincinnati, where people send things for a “second life”.  Pot is a rescue as well.  I did have to buy new grout…. so that is the only expense.

This is not my favorite pot, I would have liked it better if i had added a row of white, maybe square, tiles somewhere in the middle or upper part of the pot. I plan to plant it with perennial ground cover that does not die back in the winter, and in the spring, sprinkle in a few reseeding impatiens seeds.

It is pretty heavy, and filled with dirt i do not believe i can lift it. LOL, so it will stay outside.

Mosaic cone, christmas tree, all scraps (including the grout)

Mosaic cone, christmas tree, all scraps (including the grout).

Cone was made with left over laminating plastic rescued from the dumpster in UC Printing services about 35 years ago,  the “air-crete” was made from outdated tile mortar and crushed styrofoam packaging (i should have crumbled it into smaller pieces), additive (the last in the container, being retrieved with what water to wash it out), and all tiles from scrap collections at Building Value, and the marbles and glass drops from St. Vincent DePaul. The grout also from Building Value was colored with very old (yes 45 years) acrylic pain globs which barely mixed in it was so dry.

Not particularly easy to make, and I have no idea why the idea popped into my head (except that I like to make mosaics, LOL), nor why I felt compelled to create a test run, but when I posted this I saw that hundreds of other mosaic enthusiasts had made something like this.

It was still pretty heavy, even as “air-crete” but at least I was able to lift it to the front porch to put it beside other salvaged christmas trees… LOL

In the future, i would have grouted it with something dark green or brown. I guess if i had the energy i could paint the grout.