Hi PR I know they say to use damp sand and damp peat but I prefer to use bone dry materials except rock. But I do mist my projects like crazy right after I form them. I might be compromising strength but my test bricks now several months old are darned strong. I can't even get them to break by freezing them in my freezer. If you can make half balls on the outside of light fixtures 'gluing them together with a 'mortar' heavy on the admix is easy. Shaping the mud on the ball can be tricky because it can slump. I use a dry mix and trowel it uphill on the globe until it appears round. You can always gring off the fat bottom with a rasp to get the halfball round. I have more half balls in plastic bags around here right now than anything else. For the big ones I'm doing a 1 inch layer of strong perlite concrete first using grey portland. I will then apply my finish coat to that. For me right now I'm trying to get a strong ball but as light and thin as possible. All this testing takes sooo much time. You need to cure a month before you really know what you have. The recipe I used for the pink ball seems to be good to go. I have 2 month old bricks of the stuff that are very strong and unbelievably light. What's even better is unlike peat and vermiculite they do not absorb huge amounts of water weight when they get wet. I like this cryogenic perlite so much I've ordered 10 bags for winter. That is a lot of perlite.:) Considering it's volume it really isn't much more money than playsand.

It's "cured" as soon as it's finished. Whether it sets at that point is another issue. But as Dave mentioned, it might benefit from some resting time. It really depends upon the recipe, the proportion of peel and the method of preparation. Either way, though, it's not like a pickle. Carol

If it was me I would wait the 2 weeks If it matters, it is a sateen from Behr. Now this might make me wait longer.

Thank you everyone! And gray, thank you. Actually, I was going to wait to take a picture of the new wall color but as I was sitting on the sofa I noticed that the red bucket with gary and white mop picked up the colors of the art piece. And so I went to get my camera. Jusr when I was ready to take the picture my black and white Border Collie laid down at his gray silver bowl to eat. And so now, the black was repeated and ancored at the mid bottom as well as at the mid top. (God always creates such perfect scenes for us to capture.) It was only after I loaded the picture up on photobucket that I realized that even the curve of the cord (which will be covered) was repeated in the curve of the alignment of the art, bucket and dog. Wow! How cool is that! Thanks again. Oh, well. Glad you told me about not putting up the art right away. Paint seems to dry here pretty quickly since I am in the desert. I ended up adding a small amount of Taupe to my EK Adobe gallon of paint for the accent walls(s). For some reason - the Adobe was reading a bit green next to the Taupe which of course has more red in it. So now the new improved Adobe color is very, very nice with the Taupe on the main walls.