Birthday Mosaics

Today is my birthday and this is the first time in at least 10 years that my side of the family has been all together. That in itself is a great gift for me. I did see my AZ sister last year in September and again this year in May when we went to my MIL's 80th birthday. We also visited my brother and his family in IL a couple of years ago. But today we are all TOGETHER! The only ones missing now are my AZ's two daughters who will be coming in tomorrow. On Sunday is when the whole gang will be going to the Wind Wolves Reserve for a picnic and some good old family fun.

I know traditionally it's the birthday person that is the receiver of gifts, large or small. I wanted to kind of turn the tables a little and be the one to give a few gifts. So for the last two months whenever I had some extra time I worked on making my sisters and my brother and his wife a mosaic.

As you may know I like making mosaics with a heart motif because I'm not very creative as far as thinking of anything else to make. I started out with the one pictured below. It was supposed to be a checker board with intermeshed hearts, and wherever the hearts intersected was supposed to be the opposite color. When I was done with this one I was really disappointed because it was very difficult to see what I had intended. On paper it looked great, but the reality was not working.

So I set that one aside for the time being and started working on the next one. This one was a simpler design, again with the interlocking hearts. This time I used a solid background and all the hearts were the same color. Then where the hearts came together I used a metallic copper color, which unfortunately doesn't show up too well in the photo, but you get the idea.

Then I got brave and decided to try something totally different. I made the house numbers for one of the sisters. I had to find an interesting font and try to transfer it to my cement board. Originally this was to have the numbers and the streeet address but I quickly figured out the street name was waaaaay to long for me to incorporate. I ended up cutting the board almost in half and the following is the final result.

And lastly I was still not happy with the first checkerboard hearts and quickly set about to make a replacement. I used a couple of different techniques on this one and was pleased with the results.

Tonight we're going for sushi, tomorrow is Basque food and then we're going to listen to a friend of my s.i.l. play in a band at another restaurant/bar, and Sunday we're going to Wind Wolves for a lunch picnic. A full weekend of adventures is planned. I hope this old decrepid body can hold out! ;-)

Hope you all have a great weekend too! See you on Monday. Maybe.