My dad is one of the hardest people to shop for. He's comfortable in his retirement and when he wants or needs something he buys it. He loves his family, his dogs and golf. He does love music but I can only buy the man so many golf balls and CD's over the years for Christmas/Bday/Fathers Day etc.
I had a major win this Christmas.
Months ago my dad mentioned he missed when he used to macro may (sp?). He also has a buddy who does all kinds of mosaic art and he thought that would be really neat to get into. But he doesn't know how and what would he make and ladi da. It's come up a few other times so a few months before Xmas I got the brilliant idea to find a class!
I searched forever it seemed and when I was about to give up and just buy him a "How to" book I found a class on Groupon. Better yet, there was a class for 2. I knew dad would probably be more likely to go had he a buddy. Plus I'm always up for trying new stuff! He loved it.
Yesterday was our class, which I also learned is a two parter.
I took the day off work since the classes were already starting to fill up and we needed to nail down a day. Weekends were full through summer.
We headed down to Seal Beach early and had breakfast at
Blackboard Bistro. Decent place. Nothing to write home about. We were really really early so we strolled around the beach, the pier and downtown for a while. Then of course this lovely selfie:
We arrived at
Ocean Stained Glass ready for our class. The gal was very quirky and cool. There was one other woman there working on something from a previous class. Apparently there were supposed to be two other folks in the class but they cancelled.
The gal explained how it works telling us we had a choice to make a framed item, a glass coaster dish thing or this heart bowl. We then picked out an image we could base our design on or go rogue and make something abstract or on our own. She showed us how to use the glass cutter, showed us our pile of tools, the separated colored broken glass, and a few cute glass bobbles that we get to use. Then she pretty much let us work. The class was scheduled from 12-4 but she said most people are done before then.
We got to work. I opted for the glass dish thing since I chose the yin and yang sign and thought it would look neat on a round thing. Dad chose a cat face to make for Lori and the framed glass as his canvas.
He picked out a bunch of browns and yellows while I opted to make my sign two shades of green.
Here's dad picking out his glass:
Basically we were to arrange, cut and place the glass on our chosen piece. Once we were set on if those were indeed the pieces that we wanted to be there we would glue them in place. This is so much more complicated and time consuming then one would think. We were also perched on stools and hunched over working. Let's just say this is not a back friendly environment. Yikes. Here is the beginnings of my masterpiece:
Dad didn't realize his cat face was going to turn out to be much more complicated than mine. I had pretty much two big shapes to work with. He had many as you can see below. I also must mention that my dad is a perfectionist. This does not fair well when your working with broken glass that only cuts like it feels it's going to cut.
Even though this was time consuming and quite a bit of work, I loved it. The gal was there to offer help and encouragement when we needed it. We chatted about all sorts of things. I was quite pleased when the odd woman who was there left and the rest of the day was just the three of us.
I finished at a bit before 2pm. The woman told us this was the 1st phase. We come back in a couple of weeks to add the grout so here's my almost finished piece:
Dad's still going. I'm also realizing at the point that we may not get out before 4pm.
Time goes by. I walk across the street and get a chocolate drink from Starbucks. I chat with the woman. I watch dad and listen to him bitching at his piece cursing it and saying it's ugly. The woman constantly encouraged him as did I. I watched the woman as she created one of her glass pieces and watched in fascination as she created this beautiful flower in glass with a foil outline. I watched dad concentrating so hard on his project. The internet connection didn't work in the store so I was pretty much phone-less and it was really nice. I was practicing mindfulness the entire time totally living in the moment!
Time was creeping by and dad wasn't moving much faster. He then stated he wasn't going to be able to finish. I explained he had to because the next time we came in was a different step. He asked me to help, so I started cutting glass pieces for the area around the cat head and snapped this:
I cut some pieces and threw them his way. The gal created a couple of very cool eyes for the cat when dad got stuck on what to do. It was a bit too difficult to work at the same time on one piece so I just cut them up and waited.
Dad eventually had to break since his back was starting to act up so I was able to get some of the blue in there. He came back at it cutting and me gluing and we made it just at the 4pm cut off!
We've booked the 2nd class for two weeks from now so I'm saving this blog today and will add to it once we do the other class.
Here's dad's almost finished piece:
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| So rad right?! |
And of course here's us!
I can't wait to see what they look like when they are all finished! So much fun and new!
Ok kids! I'm back to finish up the 2nd half of this blog.
I took another Friday off work and dad and I headed down a little later this time. The 2nd part of the class was much shorter and we weren't scheduled until 2pm. So we hit a little hole in the wall called Nicks on Main Street for lunch and about noon thirty and wandered around downtown. It was a bit chilly the last time we were here, but this Friday was absolutely gorgeous out! We of course had to do our Daddy/Daughter selfie:
We hit up the class about 2pm and there were 2 other pairs of ladies there.
We said hello to Valerie and she had a little spot set up for us. We were to add grout to our pieces and then come back in an hour fifteen. Dad has deemed his piece "Picasso Kitty" and opted for the tan grout. I liked the dark grout and chose that.
Very basic - you just smoosh the grout in all the open spots of your piece.
The other gals weren't too chatty, but you know my dad and I. After this phase which only took about 20 minutes or so, so we planned to grab a drink at a bar we had already found that had air conditioning. Valerie jokingly said "Bring me back a beer!".
Ok we said! Does she know who we are? Tee hee. We of course couldn't bring her back a beer from the bar, but now we planned on picking one up for her on the way back.
We landed at
Hennessys Tavern which was perfect. Had a wine of course, dad a beer and we just chatted and chilled for a bit. We then wandered around downtown some more and dad bought me a new hat for Doheny Blues in May. Yay! Thanks Daddy!
On our way back we stopped at a liquor store. The only Heineken they had (which was what she wanted) were 40's. Ha! So we arrived at the gallery beer in hand. She was stunned and thrilled. Apparently we were the 1st students to bring her beer.
We then were to scrape the excess grout off with different shaped Popsicle sticks and basically reveal our piece. It was pretty cool! At this point I realized I wish I stuck more bitty pieces of glass in some of the crevices but lesson learned.
After we scraped em off, again only taking about 20 minutes or so, we were done!
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| Mosaic Masterpieces |
So all in all - a super fun two days! It was of course great spending time with my dad down in a beautiful beach town and also so great learning something new together!
Dad seems inspired now to start doing this more and that thrills me to no end! I know he'll come up with some beautiful pieces!
Mosaic Class = SUCCESS!
