Bits and Pieces (Mosaic in Process)

Ah yes, the old cliche about breaking a few eggs to make an omelette! I have been saving blue dishes for almost a year now. It helps to work at an auction house where endless amounts of table top porcelain appears- some of it damaged. The chipped, the cracked, the broken and unwanted all made it home with me, as long as there was some blue pattern or other. (Until about a week ago when three vast stacks of white china with a gold rim were being thrown away. I am so glad I thought to take them home! I would never have had enough blue material and the white set the blue off marvelously!)
In any even, on the eve of actual walkway construction, I made a fast stop off at a local thrift store and secured a large quantity of the above dishware, "Winter Holiday" by name. The nice elderly woman who waited on me kept remarking, "What a lovely pattern this is!" I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was taking it home to smash it all to bits...Bob and I smashed all kinds of dishes, bowls, plates, platters, cups and mugs. Very satisfying. One large bin was mostly blue; the other mostly white. We set to work, mixing manageable batches of concrete: one part Portland cement to three parts sand and enough water to make a loose mix. It took only one mix load to realize the best consistency and then we were in business.

We used plastic garbage can lids as "palettes" to hold our busted bits. We troweled on about 2 inches of concrete over the gravel (which was also about three inches deep). It worked so much easier than I thought. We had debated whether we'd need a edge of metal or wood, but the concrete didn't seem to need it.
Have you gotten the idea that I'm teasing here? I'm disinclined to show the walkway as it really is spectacular and I want to unveil it on our garden tour (the topic for my next posting).
But here's a detail of the mosaic:

We varied the sizes of the pieces to make it a more dynamic pattern, plus the fit together better. I devised a simple to follow pattern, sort of herringbone alternate stripes of blue and white. There's also quite a bit of gold which makes a nice sparkly detail. Again, thank goodness for all those many white with gold rim dishes I took at the last minute! I'd be plumb out of luck if I'd held out for just blue! And really? I think the walkway would be far less interesting...
We finished it! I wasn't sure if we'd get it done in time, but we succeeded and it is so much cooler than I even thought...