A new craft started and finished

I had my first and probably last foray into the world of mosiacs these past few weeks. A few years ago on Rhonda's now closed Down to Earth Forum one of the members did a wonderfully inspiring tutorial on how to decorate a stepping stone with mosiacs. Of course I got excited and headed off to Bunnings to buy my supplies but then didn't quite get around to starting the project. Sound familiar?

I had bought a stepping stone, tile glue, grout and a few tiles in different colours but there they sat all those years waiting for me to get motivated.  When the tradies were here recently doing the renovations I saw a lot of tiles being wasted and wondered if I could rescue them to use in some kind of project. Then I remembered the stepping stone tutorial and dug out the tiles I had bought all that time ago. However I discovered that the laundry and bathroom tiles were much thicker and apparently it is important to use tiles that are the same thickness so I bought a couple more of the smaller ones in Bunnings and got to work.

I had some of the green tiles from the kitchen renos left over which I used as a type of border for my first attempt. I really didn't know what I was doing and had never used grout before but Jo who was our presenter recently for the Simple Living Toowoomba Mosiac and Leadlighting workshop had offered to help some of us get started so a friend and I went to her place and saw some of her lovely work and she explained the process. She uses clear liquid nails  instead of the tile glue so I bought myself a tube but my, oh my, it is very messy and I ended up gluing my gloves to the tiles much of the time. LOL! Firstly the tiles are put in a towel and smashed with a hammer. I did that and then tried to work out a design which I changed a thousand times...at least. Then I had to remember the design and glue the back of each piece of tile and glue it down before it dried. Anyway I ended up with the finished product above. 

Then I had an idea of trying to design a scene with the blue sky and sun at the top of the paver with the ocean beneath which could be seen through the trees in places. Hmm, well that didn't quite work out but you can only try eh? I took the photo outside so it isn't too good but to be honest, I was just glad it was finished. 

My third and possibly last project included a ladybird I had seen here on Pinterest. Well, it was harder to do than it looked on Pinterest which is usually the way. After the tiles were glued I had to wait 24 hours before putting on the grout which I ran out of for the last paver which was a bit unfortunate. After another 24 hours I sealed the stepping stones so that they would survive our constant rain. That's a joke in case you don't realise as it hasn't rained here for many months but it will again one day. 

I still have to set the pavers into the soil in between the half dead plants which you can see in the above photo. I imagine they will be filthy in no time as we seem to have a lot of dust flying around these days. If you would like to learn more about mosiacs then check out The Mosiac Store which is a great source of inspiration. 


 I am not sure if I will do any more mosiac work in future although I still have quite a few of the off -white tiles left over from the renos but I am not sure what to do with them. There is an almost full box of them as well as the ones that have already been cut. There is so much waste in the building industry which just amazes me.

As I mentioned a lot of the plants are half dead but I have been watering the freesias which have started flowering....

... as well as the cliveas that survived being trampled on by the painters when the outside of the house was painted. They always make a nice show around the time of the Carnival of Flowers which starts next month. The rest of the plants will get a little water and hopefully they will survive till we get rain. 

If you have done mosiac work did you find it easy or was it fiddly and messy for you too? I will go back to my loom knitting now :-)