Grouted

 I am SO excited to show you the latest pictures from the Timeline Mosaic. That's because these show some squares in their almost-finished form! Yes, my friend Estela (and/or her husband Cory) grouted them a week or so ago. And after a little grout color adjustment, here they are:

I really like how the "bumpy" glass adds definition to the ark, but it unfortunately is a grout magnet - I still need to do some scraping-off-of-grout on this one.

Poor Adam.  So troubled.

Abraham's eyes are looking pretty good here, but only after he had a little eye surgery. Unfortunately, one of his eyes fell out during the grouting process (See picture below). Then when I put another in with superglue, the new eye was much bigger then his old eye. It gave him a very distinctive, mildly disturbing look. However, I cut the eye-bead down and now he looks a little more...normal

This is only the left two-thirds of the 7 days of creation.  That's why the "Genesis" is off-center.

 As you can see in the "One-Eyed Abraham" picture, the first grout was much lighter.  However, I decided to try a darker color to see how that would look.

Do you want to know how to change grout color without redoing a piece?  Well, I can't guarantee that this will work in all instances, but I used acrylic paint after reading something about it online.  The website I saw said you could paint the grout with acrylic paint if the grout was "sanded".  I wasn't really sure whether ours was or not, but I decided to try it anyway - and it seems to work just fine.  I just painted over each piece with the paint, let it dry for awhile, and then took a damp rag to the glass pieces.  Since they don't absorb the paint, it comes right off.  It's also very fun to see the vibrant colors come through all that gray - very gratifying.

I did this one half with the original grout and half with the darker coloring to see the difference.  I've had some different opinions, but I really do like the the darker grout.

So, that's our progress so far.  I'm working on moving all of the mosaic posts under the "Timeline Bible Mosaic" tab up at the top of the blog.   I have several ones on there, but still need to add more.  Perhaps after school's out...