or "I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone".I went to a garden stepping stone class yesterday. One of my co-workers who I don't know very well surprised me one day about a month ago and asked if I would go with her to this 2-day class. I said yes because I'd remembered my New Year's thought on how I needed to do more things instead of staying home hermitting. She told me yesterday she wasn't raised around making crafty things and is "stepping out" of her comfort zone and she wanted to learn how to make stuff this year.
Both H and I registered and got our materials list way ahead of time, but did that mean we got our stuff in a timely manner? No. We went to Lowe's on Saturday and only found one item, the plant saucer for the mold.
Between the two of us we had the old beach towels, old spoon, bucket, measuring cup, hammer, and I had the glass. Someone was giving away stained glass scraps and I snapped them up with no idea what I was going to do with them. Now I know, yeee-hears later, I was going to do this stepping stone class. We still needed the concrete.
We waited until the afternoon of the day of the class to get the concrete and as Murphy's Law would have it, the place on the list didn't carry it anymore. So we ended up going to another town to get it. Talk about a non-lunch lunch break. Anyhoo. We managed to find it, buy it, and lug it to class at 6:00pm.
The class wasn't really taught like a class. The teacher was more like a resource and time-line (coz concrete has a finite time to work with it). We spent most of our time sorting glass scraps in a sort of OCD way (sorting can suck you in and mesmerize you to the point you forget that you are actually supposed to be thinking of a design with the colors you pick), breaking the glass into mosaic-y pieces with the hammer and towel, and then creating our designs. Once that was complete, the teacher taught us how to mix the concrete. Turns out H and I bought the "Cadillac" of concrete which dries in an hour. The cheap stuff takes all night. So we had a very short time to put our glass in the concrete, as evidenced by my more than a few sharp edges. The concrete is supposed to "suck" the glass down just a bit and seal the edges. Well, my concrete initially sucked down the glass pieces and devoured them. So the teacher and I spent some quality time (read: me trying very hard not to go all truck driver and have a filthy mouth) digging covered glass pieces out and then soaking up some of the extra liquid. I tried putting pieces back in but as my "planned" random design was all kablooey at this point and I didn' t have much time, my stone didn't meet my expectations of perfection.
Oh well. Next week we get to do a "theme"-based stone. Not sure yet what theme I will be doing. I have two ideas so far. A pawprint made out of blue glass blobs or a Marilyn Monroe one with her pictures stuck to the bottom of big clear glass blobs with a glass glue/sealant. I'm gonna keep thinking on this.
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