Beware of Dog!

The last few weeks of school have been very heavy on ancient Roman history.
We read how in Pompeii they uncovered a mosaic that read "Beware of Dog!". And of course, we've looked at lots of Roman art and architecture, a lot of mosaics included.

So, as a fun "end of school" project I thought we could make mosaic stepping stones for the garden.

First, we got some $1 patio blocks from Menards, and flipped them over to the flat side. I had the kids draw out what they wanted. Jude wanted a sea horse and wanted me to draw it, but he drew, all by himself, a hamburger fishing for his sea horse. So, see if you can spot that later, ha!

I had a bunch of broken stained glass lying around. Seriously. I bought it when Jonathan and I were dating, thinking I would do something with it, and just now, 10 years later, did something with it!

We bought a $12 glass nipper and went to town cutting it and helping the kids arrange it. Then we used $3 silicone glue to glue the pieces in place on the stones.

We used $10 tile grout, and gooped it over the top. After two hours we used steel wool to buff most of it off the glass. Then the next day, after it had hardened some more, we buffed the rest off. Then sealed it with $3 acrylic spray.

So our total cost for this project was around $30, but we do have a lot of materials left-over we could use to make probably between 5-8 more blocks.

It was fun, and the kids liked the final result! They will go in our garden in front of our swinging bench!
Here are some photos of the process:

 Above and below is before grouting, after fixing the glass with glue.

 Jonathan helping with the grouting.

 Violet's heart.

 Jude's sea-horse and fishing hamburger.

 Oops, someone who likes flowers got a hold of the camera and took a bunch of photos of flowers.

 Sadie's.....flower....and bird.

Ezra's turtle!

 Okay, and I added these later...Jonathan helped me move them (heav-Y!).

 These are the kids flowers. I let them each pick an annual at Wal-Mart, and this is their flower bench.

This is probably really dangerous, but fun!