My neighbor Carol and I decided to ramp-up our amateur mosaic and concrete skills after successfully making stepping stones last summer, during the winter Carol’s husband, Dennis, designed and built these sturdy concrete benches for us to experiment. I am excited, and know just where I want to place this bench in the yard once I are finished adorning it with broken tile.
All winter we scavenged for cast off tile, I scored a big haul when I found a dumpster full of samples in the back alley of a tile company. We found some great scraps when a homeowner cleaned out her garage before moving. All in all we have quite a treasure trove of broken tile, old dishes, pottery, and glass marbles to choose from. I began my project with a rough pencil sketch on some kraft paper, then began breaking tiles into small pieces with a hammer. Carol found beautiful rocks and used a saw to slice them into 1/4″ strips. We began to lay the mosaic material on top of our sketches.
Carol decided to place her sliced stones and tile right on top of the bench to get an idea of how it will look. Our approaches are unique and shows our individual artist spirit, great fun. I’ll post the next steps tomorrow. We’ve never done this before so have no idea how difficult his will be to proceed when we transfer our designs to the mortar.
Gail Niebrugge, Alaska artist
