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I need pretty sunny, warm days to be outside
doing this block coloring. Luckily we had a nice weekend, really breezy,
but sunny and warm. I finished drawing my basic shapes on Sat. March 2nd
and Dave Perry and I began applying color. I was making home-made stamps
from that thick foam that craft stores sell for kids activities and
mounting them on pieces of flip-flop soles to give them enuf thickness to
hold on to them and dip just the surface of the stamp in a shallow dish w/
the acid stain color solution in it. The foam is easy to cut with nice
edges, and the flip-flop backing doesn't have to be cut w/ tons of
precision. But, Dave had a better idea. He suggested I try using pieces of
the knit fabric-foam-core drink insulator stuff, that cozies, or huggers
are made from that fit around a canned drink. We got out a bunch of them
and found that some were thicker than others and some had lumpy printing
on them. Using the thickest and flattest printed ones, I cut out shapes of
leaves, flowers, etc to make into stamps.
This turned out to be a great idea. The
foam hugger material held just the right amount of liquid concrete stain
and didn't allow it to run out and make a mess.
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I used Gorilla Glue to attach the cut out
huggie foam to the backing piece cut from flip-flop sole. It didn't dissolve
the foam or the shoe foam like some solvent based glues do and it doesn't
dissolve in water or liquids I was using like white glue will do. But,
Gorilla Glue expands and makes a type of foam as it cures , so to keep
everything nice and flat (not lumpy from expanding foam) I placed
the freshly glued stamp on a glass table and put a book on top overnight.
Perfect-o, any extra foam just squished out the sides.
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Coloring the
concrete...
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Knowing that I had a lot of line to mark out
w/ green, I wanted to use something that would go faster than using a
brush.
I started doing the vine scroll lines using
a cleaned out former paint bottle that has a very small nozzle. At first
the concrete acid stain came out of the bottle too fast and was too hard
to control. Then Dave had the idea to put a piece of cellulose sponge
crammed into the inside of the tip. This allowed me to squeeze the bottle
when necessary and fluid still flowed, but it slowed down all uncontrolled
dripping. It was very difficult to get a smooth line when gliding the tip
along the pencil line due to the multitude of small pits in the block
surface. But I decided that the over all effect would be OK, just a bit
more rustic. I went up on top of the house to look since that pretty well
simulated the distance the design would be viewed from.
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But the biggest problem was that the green
acid stain refused to turn green color. Or I should say, my concrete
blocks refused to turn green when I used the stain that was suppose to
produce a green color. And, the different blocks really reacted
differently to the stain. Some of my blocks were hollow, regular blocks
and several were solid cast lintels that will go over windows. These solid
pieces were poured at a totally different time and obviously of a very
different cement mix.
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And the so-called "Green" didn't
even show up well at all. I decided to give it some time, work on other
colors and see what it looked like the next day.
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On Sunday, while I was working on the center
designs, Dave used one of our home made stamps to go along the edges of
all the blocks and add the blue circles.
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You can see here how different the blocks look
with the exact same treatment. The colors you see here are not what the
end result will be tho. We did a minimum of two coats, sometimes
more.
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a
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Next day, I realized that the green color just
was not going to develop into any kind of color at all. I went ahead and
used my other colors, Tan, Wheat, Umber, & Red, to paint
the inside elements. Then I used the Black to go back over all the pencil lines
that had the green on them. I also made the change to switch to a small
brush. It was tons easier than using the squirt bottle. I only kept a
small amount of acid stain in my container at a time so if I had an
'accident' the damage would be minimized. And I did actually go flying
twice. I hit my shin really hard on one of the wire handles sticking out
of the block top one time and tore the skin up. I walked around with an
ice bag under an ace bandage for the rest of the afternoon after that
tumble. Fortunately, both times that I fell, when my stain cup went
flying, the color flew out on the rocks not the blocks ! I was SO
GLAD.
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In progress
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Finished
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The back rows are for the east side of the
house. I started on the west side first since I would not see it up close,
nor would anyone else, very often. I will do them next. Mean while,
the front row is finished and ready for Mike and Ryan to stack them on the
walls. The distance here, from the top floor is abut the same as the
viewing distance will be from the ground once the blocks are in place.
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So I went over all the vine lines with the
black acid stain , on top of where I had done it in green before. I knew
that the black might not be as dark since the surface had already reacted
with the previous stain attempt. Then I mixed half and half black and my
old Superstone green and filled in the leaf areas and made some new leaf
curls. It actually kinda looked green.
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Just for fun, I put in a couple of fish. There
are a few blue birds too. The shape is of a mocking bird, but it is blue.
I consider it a bluebird with attitude.
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I tried to keep certain elements in the over
all design in a repeating rhythm, and then alternate and vary the other
parts. Not using a particular system, I just inserted the bird and the
alternate whelk shell in the center of the swirls every so often. Plus, I
was kinda free-form on the various leaf and curl patterns. One of the last
things I did was go back and add small blue bell shaped flowers and that
extra touch of blue in the design made a lot of difference.
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Before I left for the day, I sprinkled some
baking soda on the face of the blocks to help neutralize any residual acid
stain and maybe help it to not make runs and drips in the rain that was on
its way.
Over all I am very pleased with the
look of the concrete acid stained frieze and think it will be really
appropriate for the house.
This row of blocks will be stacked pretty
soon. We are waiting for some capitols for our columns from DAC-ART and
cannot continue with the porch until we get them.
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