sidewalk mosaic

My daughter gave me these discontinued backs plash tiles from her boyfriends mother. (she works in a tile store) She said "sure I'll take them for my mom.  I'm sure she can do something with them."  I put them in my studio and there they sat.

Going through my Pintrest feed one morning with my cup of Golden Monkey tea (which i can't get anymore since Teavana closed) I see a post about broken china mosaic in sidewalk cracks. I have sidewalk cracks! 

That looks so cool...I can do that!  I begin my research.  What do I use as the base?  Do I get mortar?  concrete?  Do I need to grout it after?  If I do , should I seal the grout?  I wonder how it will hold up.  You get the picture.  Let me tell you...there's not a whole lot of answers out there.  Lots if pictures, but not a lot of how  to's. 

But I did find this post here that was most helpful.  Now for the broken china part. As I planned my trip to the thrift store thinking...what color scheme should i go with?  I'll use a pillow case to break the plates... A light went off in my head...I have those tiles my daughter gave me!!!  This is perfect!

Now they came on cardboard, attached with glue. One night while watching TV I pried them all off those boards and put them in a ziplock bag.  Off to home depot to get the cement here .I got the larger one since I had large cracks.  And I went to Michael's to buy a jar of those flat marbles to fill in.

I prepared my cracks by digging out some of the dirt (after pulling weeds) and sweeping away the loose dirt around the crack. I put my tiles in a container so all the colors are organized and face up so I can see them

 I put my tiles in dry to get a feel of how they would sit and see how much room i had.

 Then I was off and running!  


This is wet.

                                      
This was a fairly easy project I thought.  Although there is a learning curve.  The cement dries pretty fast. So you have to work in small batches and fairly quick.  The cement does not go as far as you think.  Don't make your cracks too deep.  I had a LOT of cracks and some were pretty big.  I went through 2 1/2 of the larger buckets of cement.  After it dried, I went out there with a toothbrush to scrub off any cement on the tiles.  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out

I hope this inspires you!