Up The Garden Path - Prep

Spring is sprung and it's time to get my arse in gear and finally make my mosaic path.  The path I have been talking about and planning for at least two years now!   The existing path in my back garden is so untidy now that I really do have to do something about it. Two years ago, we had a really cold winter and lots of snow and the water got down between the tiles and froze and pushed the tiles up, so they were beginning to rise a bit, which means they're really easy to pull up. (I also have a rather large incentive in that a Norwich salvage yard is willing to pay a quid a tile, so I need to get as many unbroken ones up as possible.  I've calculated I could potentially get a £100 return on my tiles which will pay for the materials to make my new path. Gotta love a negative cost to something!)  I'm about half way with pulling the tiles up now, so fingers crossed I have my beautiful new path by the end of May.

In the meantime, I've been researching beads and pebbles and how to actually make the path.  It's caused much hilarity in the family - I was panicking that I'd need to buy all the bags of pebbles in advance in case - like wool - when I went to get the next bag of pebbles, they were a different dye lot to the first and not the exact colour.  Apparently pebbles are pebbles and I'm being ridiculous!

These are the ones I'm going with.  They're sort of reddy browny orange but I have to say they look better when they're wet. Like pebbles at a beach that are somewhat washed out when they're dry, I may have to water my path when I'm out watering my veggies in the summer? Strictly speaking, I probably shouldn't have these - but, in my defence, the bag of pebbles was already open when I went to B&Q so I just snuck these out in my pocket, for research purposes.

And these are pebbles I've collected from various locations while on holiday - there's some Welsh slate there from Snowdonia, there's some stripy stones from Crackington Haven and Widemouth Bay, and there's even a tiny bit of Scafell Pike there too!   These will be shoe horned in somewhere along the path too.

And for the sheer joy of them, these will also be making an appearance in the path. They are TINY! Really tiny, so won't make much impact at all. But I'm hoping they will sing out as a little pop of colour every now and then.  I love them.

I've also got some clear glass beads to put in too.  I had wanted some green and blue glass beads too, but that's when I found the millefiori beads instead which are perfect.

And here's a selection of the whole lot. I'm still pondering whether to get some glow in the dark stones so we've got some interest in the evenings too? They're readily available in pet shops - they are sold primarily to put in fishtanks. I still need to think about that - apparently they are quite expensive and I'm still not totally sold on the idea anyway. I have already got some solar lights for the garden, plus all the lanterns which I put tealights in. So perhaps I'm going a bit over the top with it?

So, that's the procurement almost done and the prep is coming along nicely - not too many tiles to take up now. Progress photos to follow.  Exciting!