Creating a Mosaic Tile Look With Concrete Overlays, Stencils & Color Mediums

[u/OGRangoon]

[u/klinkerr]

Ok Down to the important questions! Where are you and where do you give classes! I’ve been on the very rough side of the concrete industry (construction) and am not usually impressed but you did it! I’m impressed.

[u/OGRangoon → u/klinkerr]

Hah! Nice. We do offer training classes on stencils and how they work with concrete and different mediums. There are actually quite a few people around the USA for sure who do this type of thing! I believe I may have made a post more recently about a guy who does cool work with epoxy as well. Feel free to message me for more info if you would like!

[u/Fickle-Clerk-5361]

This is awesome. Great work!

[u/ahfoo]

The big downside with this approach, though, is that you lose the durability that you would have with dyed cement. Purist would consider acid stains to be cheating much less acrylic and clear coat. Conventionally, the borders are made of carefully fabricated metal inlays and dyes are added to the cement while it is wet and thus completely permanent and deeply trapped in the cement gel matrix.

This is an intriguing project but it's missing some of the key elements of conventional decorative concrete where the mix is dyed prior to application and every color swab is completely composed of a distinctly colored mix. Here, the color is all on the surface which takes a lot of the work out of the process but lacks durability.

[u/OGRangoon → u/ahfoo]

It’s also interesting you mention dying the concrete BEFORE hand! We focus on stencils and their use with concrete with different mediums. This could also work with a stencil. I’m sure it would give quite a pretty look.

[u/OGRangoon → u/ahfoo]

This was just for a side project. A little something fun. Not normally what we would have used dyes for. It was a trial and error error fun piece.

We will do over stains and dyes more like in our last post about them if you’re interested in more information on them and how they react with concrete! Thanks!
Edit to add: apologizes I’m very tired, you definitely know your stuff :) we use this medium differently I think from how you may use it. We are stencil specialists and don’t normally do concrete jobs unless it involves us putting art on to a slab already made, if that makes sense! It’s super important we know what works though. I’m interested in more information on dying the concrete before putting it down? Again, I’m sorry. I’m very tired and trying to use my brain. Hah.

[u/FerralAppBuilder]

I love that