4.9.10

I read somewhere recently that butterflies don't live off of flowers alone. They have to drink water, too. But they can't land on water; instead they land on damp soil or sand and drink from that. For this reason, a shallow dish of damp sand is an asset in any butterfly garden. I shared this information with my mom and she was intrigued. So, on a recent visit to Houston, we set out making butterfly drinking dishes.

Mom had a bunch of stained glass scraps on hand. We also went to various craft and discount stores to get bags of glass beads and pebbles. I'm scoring and cutting glass into smaller pieces here. You can see all of our containers of various glass bits.

This is the 16" plant saucer I used as my base. Mom made a slightly smaller one. Any size would work.

This is my mom's dish. She put glass bits on the edge, then built a spiral on the bottom of the dish.

Mom's spiral turned out to be a GREAT idea. Neither of us had made these before. Mom didn't put grout on the bottom of her dish, just around the beads at the top of the dish.

Gorgeous!

Grouted.

Wiped down and filled with sand. SOOO pretty! Here's where the lack of grout on the bottom of the dish paid off. Because the little glass beads Mom glued down stood up off the bottom of the saucer, the sand could be worked down in between the beads, but you can still SEE the beads. I think this will help attract the butterflies, in my humble opinion. Though we have no way of knowing...

Gluing, gluing, gluing!

I put my last name on the bottom, 'cause I intend to use this in the front yard. Should it walk off, I might be able to reclaim it what with my name in it and all. Or the "new owner" might feel bad... Alas, it won't actually show, because the sand will be on top of it.

I used little red beads to make hearts on the bottom of the dish. Awww!

I filled in around my name with white glass, then around that with blue. The sides have big blue glass circles and green glass stars alternating all around. I filled in the gaps with slivers of green stained glass. LOTSA work!!

It almost looks Christmas-y...

Mixing the grout. Hair up, gloves on!

Gotta mush it all around and make a nice runny paste.

Gooping it all around...

Scraped off some of the dry grout to see how it's gonna turn out.

OOOH, very loverly!

Awesome! I'll wipe it down again after it's cured a bit more. I love it! It's a shame that the work on the bottom will never show, but oh well! Can't wait to fill it up and see all of the butterflies come rest on it for a drink!