hi everybody and welcome to another show with carrie and renovating today i'm going to do a show on a local artist here in peters township because beautiful mosaics tile glass all kinds of stuff we're going to talk to her about her one of a kind artwork so her name is lisa murkowski welcome lisa how you manage oh hey wait a minute now you know i have a cold over the holidays and just in case nobody has tried this this that i wanted to tell you guys because i think one time i told you about the nostril stuff that makes you not taste food more which could be going around the holidays but this works great i'm three days done ok lisa sorry back to you and i've been doing that for thirty years i still am but i felt like i needed something else i didn't know what would and i went and took a class at touchstone center for crafts which is a wonderful sat that's up by past uniontown up around the summit in off of forty it's only an hour from here and it's just a wonderful place i had a wonderful teacher i made a mosaic in three or four days i think that what was the class and i fell in love with it i realized oh i can do this since then i have become possessed and i have taken many many classes all over the place with all of her teachers and all different materials and you know you learn by doing so i just know how long ago you were and doing it now it's about four years ok so what was the first one you started doing after you did your very first one class what did you start with because i'm sure it was something for her like to hang on the wall yes yes in fact there's a piece of or there called sixty eight east which is really one of the first ones i did and it was it was the fall and i went driving up and down forty looking at the trees and the color and trying to do something with all those folks hollers and what i came across was this little farm and i thought ok i'll do that and it was kind of a scenery thing which is very different from a lot of other things i've done but i just like to do all different face now can sixty eight east go outside or is it an inside sixty eight east could go outside but i didn't specifically make it for outside i can tell you that when i make a piece one of the most important things is figuring out where it's going to be have you know hung or port or placed because if it's outside here in pittsburgh we have the freeze thaw so i have to be conscious of that and i have to use well now i thought i would show you about some outdoor yard because i think we can always use a little pick up in the  dreariness sometimes or even when you've got your yard looking pretty good it's just fun to add so i want to show you a couple things these are three pipes three different heights it's a p pipe just a regular four inch pipe it's got a primer on it so that the glue will stick and what i did is this one's actually upside down because so to keep the glue from sliding down but eventually it'll be this high and i did this purposely the three of these with a very restricted color palette i did not have i mean i basically had purples and a few other things and i made myself stick within that so i think it's going to be kind of fun i may put something on the top sticking up i don't know i did put plates on the bottom just to stabilize them that's one way to do it you also can put  rebar or something like that in the ground and put it over that so that's a matter what you decide to do now one of the things that i'm going to do to this one is i'm going to take some tiles this is actually a plate that i cut up and i'm going to used some of these to just give a different look as as a striker probably a couple of months there so this can go outside this can stay outside all winter and the reason is this has a silicone glue on it that is ok outside the part of the p v c is fine outside then we have this this is a this can be a stepping stone it also can be it has a hanger on the back of it so you can hang it on a tree which i've done a lot of times it just kind of adds some color where you don't expect it you also can put it laying down in your garden lean it against a fence or hang it on a fence so this also can stay outside in fact this is been out several years and it's doing just fine because it has thinset that's why it's on the board that it needs to be on and it has the right kind of and he said now this was just kind of a fun thing that i decided to do this again is yard art you can put it wherever you want and make these in different sizes and it's just a fun piece and it also consi outside all year long you might want to bring some of these images kind of clean them up but but they're ok outside that we have this guy and this is something moe that these and this have not been grout it so they will look different when they're grouted and they will look more finished this also is not crowded i have in our front yards probably about that tall about that wide and it's tipped a utility thing so i wanted to cover it up because it's right in the middle of the grass so i designed this box and i actually built the box i built the box out of large pieces of that cement board and pass them all together with  angle brackets the things you learned i go to home depot a lot and so the bottom of the shower yeah well it could be because the same kind of tell that you put in a shower is exactly the same time so all of this white's to disappear the whole background you know where you see the white this will have a whole different walk when i draw it and i'm going to grout it probably with a more gray screen and i do mix my own grout when i do colors like that and i will totally change it and so for many angle year at this is that it is heavy but it can be lifted up the reason i put this on with a slant is because the thing is cricket and so to be able to make this stand right i had to accommodate that so it's just you know i don't always have a plan and i don't plan but you do have to adjust along the way so all of these can be outside all year round mostly because of the materials that are made up that includes the tiles glass is ok outside some tiles are some tiles on you have to be really careful when you're making a point i want to show you a piece that was commissioned for an address plate and this is again for outside we've got the whole board covered with inset the idea was the address is twenty eight ocean so we found one piece of glass that she love so i said well i can i can just use that piece of glass at first she thought i want to have mermaids i want to have this and that i said we have to remember this is an address plaque the point is for people to be able to see your address and she wanted more color so we're trying to think ok what do we want to do and she you know i came up with this orange and green she really like that so that's what we're going with i also put a black line in here is another very important thing is you have to watch your towns because these this orange and this blue were similar tone and you would lose the orange if i didn't have this black line separating it so there's a lot of little tricks the reason i have not attached these and this also is not grounded is because we're going to drill holes and this is where it's going to be attached to the house and then we'll put these on afterwards so you have to think through all of these things when you're making something instead of just you know doing it i want to show you one other thing i have a saw that i cut these letters out with and it's very similar to the song we were just talking about except this one is wet it's not like a regular wet saw but i there's no way i could cut this without it being a million pieces and cut out these centers so i do have a thought and i really only use it for when i can't get into something but these are ceramic tiles this is glass this is so this is a combination it's actually very simple but very important to get the viewing right and for the client to  good i look around we're in your studio and i see so much broken glass all organized i see things on the wall what inspires you to start something is it someone  and said i want you to make me a address plaque for something to hide an ugly pipe in my yard or how does it mainly come along whether this two different way one is i just make some things i get inspired to make and the other way is someone commissions me and said i want something specific or i i like that piece you have that i want a different color or whatever that may be so i can talk about commissions a little later about how i do that but it is something that i'm going to do a lot of times i have a lot of ideas in my head pretty much constantly but i find it helps to go through my materials and a health fists just kind of look around and say what do you have and what do you want to make it and what are you thinking which is why i have so many materials with a lot of people that will just order for a project but i prefer to just have all sorts of stuff because you never know what you're going to want to use and what might inspire you it could be a centerpiece medallion that i might build out from that it could be i'm into flowers than our hearts it just really depends on some of your stuff i remember seeing i think you have a fish that i love and it's i was was it it for or maybe it individual and i just thought it was kind of a cool shape so look at that and then in that particular fish i took the handles off a teacup and while two teacups and i made them into the fans on the side so i do i don't do a lot of summer you know pottery your old dishes but i do do some and that's kind of a creative way even in the fishes body and what if i came to you with like some of my grandmother's old dishes or even a dish i just bought it you know the outland i loved you would incorporate it for me i could yes i definitely could it's best to use china is better in the sense that it's thinner and if you get a stone where it's a little harder to work with and it might not be able to be used outside so it's good to check what your purposes and but you might have chipped things laying around the house doesn't have to only play it could be a plate that fell on the floor and you just take that and then we work together and now i could kind of tell you a little bit about when i do a commission and i've done these long distance to so it's not that someone has to be there i will get ideas together i will get colors together and materials and i just text pictures and it's the progress shots and do you like this do you like that and it i really enjoy that and it's it's just that's what i do because it is a process and it's very flexible that's one of the reasons why i like pose a as opposed to staying glass even though i do use stained glass that's the glass i use but i don't put the came around it and do the very structured stained glass for a couple reasons one the most aching you can just cut if a piece doesn't work out you can just cut it in it's not so specific and i enjoy that the other thing i do which is different from saying glass is most of my works are not see through you know you can't really bad order window off i do remember one the oh yeah oh yeah i have it was a tropical yemens or it was a red flower thing yes i don't know that i have that here but we can see the a lot people do that and that's what they want to do and that's called glass on glass i just i can do it it's not a problem you can take an old window you can put a you know scene of flowers in it in a wild flower something like that i certainly can do that but people tend to only have so many windows in a large window and i just i just it's just not my style but i can do it right right and where do you get a lot of your glass or i get glass so i can go right there and pick my actual piece i really like to pick the pieces because if you order online classes very different in fact really so you let in a minute how the different ways glass or glass is not a solid color some of it is but a lot of it has swirls in it or different colors and it might be this one has a lot more white in it this one has a lot more blue even though they're the same color so i like to pick it and then when you're pulling out from that you say well i want to use the darker part here or the lighter part so you can get a glass of the big when i've got internet sources have a place on my way to visit my son in c and i stop there and they have all kinds of stuff how big are the sheets normally i mean like do you just buy a sheep from yachts again either as normally as the most normal size is probably about twelve by twelve but that they cut down big sheet so that's just for practicality right and i generally don't need a huge piece because i'm cutting it up but you can buy them pretty large and you know some people want that because they've got a big thing but i usually just cut it down manageable i want you to show us how you cut the five because i'm sure you need tools to do this you don't do it with your hand do you ever get cut i could get every day every day pretty much the say don't you don't you get  now to see these days i have to wear glasses so that's my quads eye protection but i do have various saws for cutting gloves for cutting wood for cutting boards so i watch that you know i protect myself there or if i'm chopping something well i think that we should take a look around at some or your are ok now and i'd like you to show us some of the way you do things and how can and then we'll show it will  so we'll end it here and show you some stuff yeah and if you don't want to pay all the tariffs and everything buy something local not made in china one of a kind sounds going to may just for you right se hi i wanted to show you some of the tools that i use in my other life never used any tools and now i love tools so the first thing i want to show you is this is called a wheeled nipper and there's two wheels and you crunch them together and that's how you cut the glass now you can see they don't actually meet so the glass when it's being cut is just going to  the wheels only touch it one spot and then it breaks the glass so see that just broke the glass very easily not very nicely but it broke it easily but if i wanted to cut this into little squares could do that pretty easily but a more accurate way out to cut the glass is using this tool this is a scoring to what has a tip on it that's like a knife and so i make a scoreline and then this is a this is a i'm not sure what these are cold running pliers i think and they will snap this very nicely so there you have a nice nap you can also do or whatnot it takes a little more practice to be able to do some of that but that works well these and some other tools that i have are for tile they use some ceramic tile some of it's very hard to cut some of it's pretty easy but this is just a whole different kind of thing that is for cutting tile this is for getting in really tight so there's lots and lots of tools this whole thing's full of tolls and  we have tweezers because we're often picking up little pieces putting them in to glue them and then these are invaluable these are dentist tools my dentist generously has given me tools and this is for picking out a crowd  now we have two boards here this one is called weedy board and it's kind of got a cement outside on it and it's foam inside and this has more of a fabric on the outside with the foam inside the reason i use these boards is because they are very light so when i'm putting in a lot of glass or stone or tiles a particular on a bigger mosaic it doesn't weigh down this much these also are  there are actually used for building showers so they're waterproof freeze proof that kind of thing so they're this is good for either inside or outside and then there's one other thing that's very important to this situation of making mosaics is the glues i have all kinds of blues and glue expert now at least in my little world but i have liquid nails i have dab stuff i have power grab i've got elmer cement you know if there's a lot of different things this particular gloom aclu is very good for when you're doing like a glass on glass where you want to be able to see through the glass because it tends to dry pretty clear so i wanted to let you know that there's that the longer i've been doing this the more i've learned about the glues i also use fins that quite a bit since that is a like a cement and it is used particularly for outside things and you have to mix it up like cement only it's not quite the same and then i also use grout and i consider those all kind of tools of what i do because they're the gro goes on afterwards and it covers a multitude of little imperfections and kind of finishes it off i also have some saws one saw i have i use a wet saw and that's good for cutting tile i've got a table saw which is good for cutting big boards and i have what's called a ring saw which is allows me to make intricate curves that i couldn't otherwise be able to cut myself on the back it smoother so when you cut when you're scoring you want to use the smoother side score because it works out better but you can actually use both of these sides so sometimes you may want more solid sometimes you want the pattern and just quite figured out what i'm going to do with it but you can see it's got all different colors so it and a lot of the glass that i use is not a solid color particularly as a jockey game but  can say like here maybe i just want something blue green i can just pull that part out i can just you know i can cut according to what i want so you know it just depends on what you're looking for this is an extreme example but for instance here is something that is it's got browns and blues in it now when i was cutting it i was actually doing a stream and when i was doing the stream i want to blue i liked having some of that brown in there but i actually wanted the blue so i'm not exactly sure where i cut it but it came off of the same piece which you might not think but then some other day for something else i might need to use the brown so that's that's how i look at glass and why i like to pick my own glass i wanted to show you how i cut ceramic tile a lot of the tile i get comes like this it's a four by eight c and this particular tile i good to be used outside so i know that and that's generally what i ordered so i just want to show a real quickly how i do this there's a scoring thing here similar to the glass but it's done differently score and then that little foot and there i get a nice clean break shot i want to cut squares or a lot of the same stripes out of tile that's how i do that ok now i want to show you how i can make strips of glass now as i said before i don't want to use the rougher side i'm going to use the smoother side and i'm going to put it down on the strip cutter and i have a set so that i'm going to cut a half inch for it and then i'm going to move it down and i'm going to cut another half a strip and then i'm going to do one more so these could be an inch two inches five inches whatever you want and then i can easily break it now before i so i've got three lines there well two lines to make three different pieces of what i can also do is i could make half an inch squares so i can cut the glass the other way and believe me everything doesn't always come out for equally so when i attempt to show you this i hope it is out right now i have scores more in both directions so as opposed to cuttin squares like i was just doing by hand before this cuts very nice consistent sizes and saves me a tremendous amount of time so these  are all things that i'm sure sure it's just it depends on what you want to do i can make a smaller down to about a quarter ridge and then you don't want to go much further than that so that's how i would cut that here we have a this is called a motos saw basically what it is it's a saw that goes up and down the blade goes up and down and i can actually turn and have it cut various interesting shapes as opposed to just a straight line so this is quite handy when i have cut out some round shapes that i want for background or for my substrate i just put it put lines and i can draw in here so it's very interesting how kerry has her skull that's the bone she is just dying for me to work on the skull for her which i could do no this is made a plastic it's very lightweight i i haven't thought about this until today when she brought it up but what i would do is i would cover this with i probably would start with something like the bandaging that  purporting on a cast just to get me a surface of some texture and let's assume it's going to be inside what i would do as i would you know figure out what you know what i wanted way or and this is where all my little pieces of things come into play i could you know go this way this way i have aside from having sheets of glass i have all sorts of little tiles and you know make as i now have a microwave kiln so i can make little melted fused glass for in here but basically this could be anything i want any color i want and scary or funny or you know whatever it is it's just a matter of sitting down and starting to do  it it is trickier to work on a three d object definitely is although i've gotten better with my glues to figure out which ones won't slip so kerry can give me her ideas and i'll make her like a