I had always planned to cover the plain coping stones in our garden with mosaic but I hadn't intended to tile directly to the stones. However, since we've had such good weather lately, I was feeling spontaneous and creative, so I went out and created two mosaic coverings. One was a pebble mosaic which I'd only planned a few hours earlier on that day. Even the word I included only came into my head as I was actually doing the mosaic!
The second mosaic was another spontaneous creation and because the design is a little more complex I'm actually still working on this one.
The Healing Mosaic
This particular wall didn't actually have a coping stone on top and is actually higher than the wall next to it. It also sloped down to the other wall with a very crude and uneven surface. I therefore decided that applying a pebble surface would help soften this bland surface and it has turned out rather well :)
The idea of including a word only came to me as I was actually applying the pebbles to the wall! I'd wondered about adding darker pebbles to make a pattern as I was progressing and then I thought:
"Wouldn't it be lovely to include the word 'health' or 'healing' to the design using the really dark stones"
So this is how it turned out. The 'H' is more of a brown colour as I'd not realised I had more of the darker pebbles to complete the mosaic. It does emphasis the beginning a lot more; even if it was unintentional :)
Even though the pebbles were already polished I still added a couple of coats of Yacht varnish to seal it all. Plus, it does make the surface more like a river bed now :) And with that I come to my 2nd wall mosaic :)
The Blue Mosaic
Well, I was originally going to mosaic pieces of foamboard and then attach them to the coping stones later in case of bad weather. However, the sun has been out a lot more than expected this year and I was just feeling so creative. I just went out there with some glass gems and some spare round mirror tiles and created away :)
This is very much a mixed media mosaic and it's not something I've attempted in a while. It's also been quite experimental but the effect has been amazing so far.
You see, I had these 5cm round mirror tiles and I'd found in the past, that because of how thin they are, they've cracked in the frosty conditions. Now (I actually thought of this whilst working on yet another mosaic) I thought "What if I place glass gems on top of the mirrors in order to catch the sunlight?" And it has so far been quite dazzling (in a good way). This way the mirrors are kept secure underneath but still allow light to reflect off them through the glass gems; and even if the mirrors should crack, they'll still be in one place and still function as intended :)
I have used a mixture of coloured glass gems here; mainly blue, clear and green. I didn't add mirrors to every one, but as well as the big mirrors, I also added smaller mirror tiles to underneath the odd glass gem.
The gems were all added first. The tiling came later. I used the same technique as I did for my Yin Yang mosaic. This has allowed a shaded but wavy effect to be included. In a way it represents the sea, but also a series of eyes, and whatever else people can make of it :)
The Little Fellow At The End
No I do not know what was going through my head when I added this little fellow ;) I just wanted a feature to finish it off really. I've used a similar technique with the mirrors except they're under ALL the gems. Anyway, it's staying now as I'm sure it'll be another feature that'll catch the sunlight :)
Grouting
I have grouted this mosaic as I've gone along simply to add more protection as I work. Plus it means I don't have to cover as much of it up when it rains.
The tiling is all complete now and I just need to remove some of the excess grout and complete grouting the rest. When it's complete it should be a nice little addition to the garden :)
Watch this space for further progress ;)
