The Circle Garden

This is why I have not been blogging for a while. As a result of my first mosaic commission I was asked to create a mosaic as a 60th birthday present for a private garden. The garden in question is the most beautiful Circle Garden in New Malden in Surrey - my clients are avid gardeners and very talented! It was quite a challenge to come up with a design that reflected their own design ideas.

I have to admit I had two goes at getting this mosaic completed! But I learnt much along the way about material use and colour which I will use if anyone ever asks me to do another design. In fact I ended up by drawing on my Grandmother's embroidery designs as inspiration. I blogged about them earlier in the Spring. The colours and structure just fitted in beautifully. Whilst sitting constructing the circles I suddenly realised that it was very similar to gem-setting (and took me back to my jewellery-making). I absolutely love making these mosaics.

The grand unveiling was at the 60th birthday party on Saturday - and yes I now have another garden mosaic commission as a result!

Some pictures of the mosaic under construction and the influences...

 A photo of part of the garden full of circle lawns, topiary and amazing planting.

 My initial design for the main mosaic circles, but not entirely happy with the result...

 Fortunately the client have a fabulous studio space at the bottom of the garden so working there was just wonderfully peaceful. These are some of the first discs - the whole family got involved and created some of the smaller discs and leaves.

Maybe you can see where some of my ideas start to come from...

 This is more of what I wanted it to look like.

 And feeling much happier about the finished result - just need to grout them now.

And up on the wall at last.

And now I have to start thinking about lizard and dragonflies...