Thanks everyone. Yes, I grew the gourds myself. I have a few others but haven't done a lot with them. I have one other gourd birdhouse but I drilled the hole too big and so far nobody has taken residence in it. I have one I turned into a feeder as well and a few still sitting on a shelf in my garage that I haven't done anything with. Last year was the first time I'd ever grown gourds and I didn't plant a whole lot of them. I'm hooked though and have put several seeds out already and have plans to put out more. A lot of the seeds I put out are seeds from the gourds I've already worked with. I hope they grow! I also have another of the wood birdhouses DH's grandfather made. This one is the original red and white he painted it and is hanging from my cedar arbor. There's a family of finches living in it right now! I just love to watch the birds (and so do my two kitties!). Bright, we should get together and go junking some time! I'm on the NW side of Lake Norman, about 45 minutes from Charlotte. Robin

The nodding flower is just like any other plate flower, except the base is a small plate with a vase attached to it. I also put a blue glass glob in the center (that is the bottom of the vase). I used two plumbing elbows that were both less than 90 degrees curve to give it a gentle downward angle. I think that the new spoon method would work well because you could just bend the spoon handle. kathy

(Big inhale)..Ahhh good to get those GEII fumes... uh, I mean it was good to mosaic something!! Jane, I'll probably post it in the junkyard when it's done. Slow, yep you recognized the mirror tiles! I ordered the tiles, cuz I wanted to do this fairly quick. And evidently,my glass cutting skills have not improved. I tried cutting some glass today for another mushroom (this one will be GOG with lights in it)and it was pathetic. Thanks everyone, there's a lot of curb shopping competition around here, so it was a real find! Maria

Jynja, you're here!!! Oh man, you do such amazing work! Linlee, that project you've got going looks great-- so many little pieces! Thanks for the welcome back, Slowme-- I've missed this place. The inherent trouble with tutorials for mold making, as I am finding out, is that my hands are always goopy when a photo should be taken. This stuff is messy for sure. If I get to a place where something I am doing actually works, then I'll write out the steps. For now, if people are interested, there are about a gazillion tutorials over in the Hypertufa forum here and some incredible information over at the Garden Art Forum site. Check out this guy's site: http://www.concrete-art.com/. If you click on the "Direct Concrete Technique" and the "Works in Progress" links on his front page, you will find some awesome information, with loads and loads of photos to go along with it. Blows me away at how much he shares. Andree Le Blanc's "light-weight" cement could be because of a mesh armature of some sort, or it could be that she's used some kind of light weight material in place of some of the sand. Who knows? Styrofoam is what I'd talked about using awhile back-- you were afraid it would rot, remember? In any case, I'm still saving chunks I scrounge for maybe-someday. The wire mesh idea has been around for a long time, as far as I can tell. They called it ferrocement or something like that. If you google this, you can find articles about houses that were built using this method. In researching cement work, I've found tons of artists using variations of this idea. I think Jynja uses the lath (please correct me if I'm wrong about this), which I think is a great idea-- it makes a lot of sense, all those little "pockets." I also like her idea of using the spray foam insulation on the inside. Oh oh! I keep forgetting to mention one HUGE inspiration for me was Klinger's hollow sphere in a thread over on the Hypertufa forum (linked below). Oh man, what a wonderous thing it is! Nancy Here is a link that might be useful: Klinger's Hollow Sphere Thread