Mosaic made of stone by own hands

The tradition of using natural stone in construction has survived in our time. Granite, limestone, tuff and other rocks are successfully used not only for the construction of buildings for various purposes, but also for decoration. One of the ways to decorate a constructed building and increase the strength of its construction is a mosaic made of stone.

It is not only standard facing marble or granite slabs, but also colorful author's works, recruited from different in color and texture small fragments. Each author's mosaic made of natural stone is first and foremost a work of art, and it will long adorn the structure and tell about the time in which its creator worked.

Material for mosaic production

Everyone can try in this work. Having even a small country house or plot, it is possible to create not only beautiful mosaic panels or fancifully lay out stone paths from colored stones, but also use ready-made modules from stone squares for this purpose. Any mosaic made of stone can greatly enhance the pool, kitchen flooring or exterior walls. Each work requires certain knowledge and skill, therefore, having conceived to decorate your own house or plot with a stone mosaic, it is worth to get acquainted with the basics of craftsmanship and try your opportunities in making a small mosaic picture.

An ordinary walk along the riverbank can bring a large enough stock of various small stones for a future mosaic. Sorting them by size and color, then thoroughly rinsing and clearing of dirt, you can start creating a preliminary sketch. Having already picked up the material and roughly imagining what a mosaic of stones will look like, you can create a real miracle with your own hands.

Technology of work

There are two technologies for making a mosaic coating. The most accessible and less labor-intensive is the direct method of pressing individual elements into a viscous base. The reverse method is the laying out of a mosaic pattern on a smooth surface and pouring a special binding composition of the finished picture. After setting the solution, the product is turned over and cleaned from the front.

The pebble shattered with water is an excellent material for making such stone paintings. Selected in color, shape and size pebbles are placed in accordance with the sketch in a wooden or metal frame. A small notch along the perimeter of the entire frame will help the binder to keep the mosaic within certain limits.

The height of the side of the frame should be slightly larger than the thickness of the collected stones. Before laying out the mosaic pattern, a plywood or cardboard wrapped in paper is placed on the bottom of the frame. It can be drawn a sketch of the future creation.

Artistic approach

Own mosaic made of natural stone can look different, in accordance with the imagination of the artist, but more often large elements are located in the center of the product in the foreground. Minor details look best in the background or in the spans between large stones. To place the smallest stones, you may need tweezers.

There is no need to achieve complete resemblance to the preliminary sketch. The most important thing is to observe the color proportions and pick out the pebbles with the original texture. Such a work, as a mosaic of stone, in any case will look beautiful and elegant.

Connecting Elements

All the elements of the picture of stones are first placed in a frame without a binding compound. After completing the drawing of the mosaic, it is necessary to fix each stone in its place with any glue. After that, epoxy resin is poured into all the empty spaces on the mosaic and the space between the frame and the stones. The epoxy layer should not be thicker than 2-3 mm.

After solidification, the mosaic is taken out of the frame, turned over and placed on a soft surface. On the reverse side, the remnants of the paper substrate are scraped off, and a full epoxy resin filling is made . Then, on the resin that has not yet hardened, a suitable piece of glass fabric is laid out. A layer of epoxy resin is also applied over the fabric material. After hardening, the stone mosaic is turned face up and covered with a thin layer of colorless varnish.

Other materials and methods

In the same way, a mosaic made of glass and stone can be made. Adding a bottle or other broken glass to the mosaic pattern will make it more bright and elegant.

A more complex art is considered to be a set of mosaic cloths made from thin polished stone plates. Such work requires cutting of plates from a stone, placing them in a size-correcting frame. The technology for making a picture of polished plates is similar to that described above. The only difference is that the mosaic of such stone elements requires after the manufacture of additional polishing and polishing.

In the same way, the mosaic elements are laid on a cement base. Mosaics fixed with cement mortar can for a long time be in interaction with moisture.