Organic Art with Leaves and Cement

Follow these simple guidelines to make beautiful organic art for this leaf-shaped bird bath or garden sculpture that will look great anywhere in the garden.

What you need for your cement organic art

• Cement
• River sand
• Leaves – larger leaves like this Colocasia (Elephant’s ear) are ideal. For bigger shapes you can use Gunnera
• A piece of shutter-board or scrap wood to work on
  

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What you do:

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 Step 1:

On the shutter-board shape a pile of sand into a mound. Place your leaf over this mound with the back of the leaf facing outwards.

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 Step 2:

Mix 3 parts of fine river sand with 1 part of cement and water to form a stiff consistant mixture known as mortar.

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 Step 3:

Smooth the mortar over the leaf until you have a layer at least 3cm thick. Don’t take the mortar right to the edge of the leaf – you need to leave a 10mm strip all the way around.

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 Step 4:

Allow the mortar to cure (dry). NB. Cover the organic art project with black plastic for more effective curing. After 3-4 days remove the leaf.

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NOTE: It is advisable to reinforce the mortar/concrete and, if you want a taller water feature, embed reinforcing wire into the mortar/concrete so that you can attach the bird bath to a post.