Broken tile mosaic: how to do it yourself

Remember when we showed you the most famous buildings of the iconic Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí? So a bright mosaic of fragments is often called “Gaudi style mosaic”. The architect really often used this decorative technique, creating a mosaic from fragments of ceramic products, vases, dishes, and ordinary tiles. By the way, it was Gaudi who invented the hexagonal mosaic tiles, but this is a completely different topic..

We will separately mention such use of broken tile mosaics as decoration of garden paths. In this case, it is advisable to use large enough pieces of ceramic tile, combining them as you like. It is thanks to the randomness that the original decor can turn out, and the track itself will eventually turn out to be durable and comfortable.

In addition to decorating garden paths, broken tiles, or rather a mosaic made of it, can be used:

• To decorate facades.
• Wall cladding and creating unusual flooring, for example, in the hallway, in the kitchen, in the bathroom and in the washroom.
• Furniture decor such as countertops.
• Decorating flower pots, flowerpots, containers, borders, raised beds, that is, in landscape design.
• Stone fence decorations.
• Decoration of the bottom of the pool and other artificial reservoir on the site.

The process of laying a mosaic from broken tiles looks like this:

• It all starts with the choice of the pattern and the selection of the appropriate material. You can buy inexpensive ceramic tiles of the shades you need, find initially broken ones for free, but first you need to decide what exactly you want to see on the wall, fence or countertop.
• We gently break the tile with a hammer into pieces of the desired size – if the surface is large, then the pieces can be made larger, for a small pattern – accordingly, smaller.
• We strongly advise you to first lay out the drawing just like that, without a solution, for example, on the floor, and then transfer it to the chosen base.
• We level the surface before laying, carefully prepare.
• We use a special tile mortar. We apply it with a spatula in separate areas, otherwise it will dry out and you will not have time to lay out the mosaic. Sometimes craftsmen apply the mortar directly to the tiles. We work slowly, transferring the drawing to the prepared surface. We advise you to start from the center of the composition, and then go in different directions. The background is laid out last..
• After a day, when the solution hardens well, we apply grout, because there will be gaps between the broken tiles in any case. Remove excess grout with a damp cloth.

Note that the process of laying broken tiles is painstaking, rather long. Therefore, if you want to repair quickly and are not going to save on material, this option is not for you. But if you need an original decor or there are remnants of tiles on the farm, be sure to try it! For clarity, we give you a video of laying a mosaic from pieces of tiles: