Making balls and flowerpots from pebble for do-it-yourself landscape design

A ball or sphere made of stones looks very impressive and will be a decoration in any landscape design. I personally have not seen such products anywhere. Photos from foreign masters. As you can see on the second slide, it can still be made with night illumination. How can you make such balls from pebble with your own hands?

It is necessary to collect the required volume of flat gravel. If you live by a large river, then you can dial along the shore of suitable sizes. This option is not for everyone, and it is also long and tiring. Better to buy. Look for suppliers in your city. There are many offers for the sale of calibrated flat pebbles now. I think two bags for one ball, a sphere, will be enough. For a price it is about 800-1000 rubles.

You will need polyurethane glue to glue the gravel. There are many names of them. Focus on companies that pour industrial floors. Their product line includes polyurethane varnishes and adhesives. We need glue to hold the stone chips together to cover the paths.

Next, we take a large rubber ball of the size we need and dig a hole under half of its volume (hemisphere). We will cover the upper hemisphere with this pebble. The surface around the perimeter of the ball must be level and horizontal.

We begin to lay out the layers of pebble, holding the stones together with glue and gluing the upper layer to the lower, repeating the contour of the ball. We use a thin brush. You will probably have to wait until each layer grabs, only then move on to the top one. The process is long, but worth it. The ball will not push through, because the whole load falls on the lower layers of stones - as in an arch made of bricks. The ball is for geometry control only. A pebble sphere of the same shade, size and shape looks especially beautiful.

We make two such hemispheres. But we don't finish one, we leave the hole for the backlight. We cast a stand for a sphere made of concrete with a lamp holder and electrical wiring (from 220V or from a solar panel from aliexpress). The backlight should be switched on from the light sensor. There are no problems with the selection of the necessary lamps on aliexpress for these purposes.

Install the sphere with a hole and carefully, lifting it together, install and glue the upper sphere.

A sphere can also be made from pebble that is not laid in a horizontal plane. Perhaps it will be necessary to install a thick wire frame inside just such a ball (for structural rigidity).

Similarly, spheres can be made from decorative tiles, artificial or natural stone.

For even better bonding of the stones and for the "wet stone" effect, cover the sphere with polyurethane varnish or a thin layer of the same glue.

The following pebble decor technology: Manufacturing technology of decorative flowerpots

These products, besides the fact that they look no less impressive, also carry a functional purpose: these are flowerpots. Their production is similar to the technology for making spheres. We also need a shape, the geometry of which we will repeat.

We purchase a flat pebble (see information above). Next, you need a plastic flowerpot or flower pot (this will be the formwork). If the plastic flowerpot has a complex geometry, then we cut it vertically into two halves and fasten it with a wire back. So that in the final it was possible to separate these halves. If the plastic pot is in the shape of a bucket, then you don't need to cut it - the pebble of the future flowerpot does not adhere to the plastic and the product can be easily removed.

We dilute a thick concrete mixture (3 to 1) with the addition of a plasticizer and tile glue. At the bottom of the mold, place the cut-out piece of plastic film (for better stripping). We spread the concrete on the bottom, let it grab a little and begin to lay pebbles around the perimeter. We fix it on the mortar and coat it with layers of concrete from the inside. We reinforce with a painting net between the layers. The solution must be thick and with the addition of tile glue (to slow down the setting).

Here you can see the inner surface of the flowerpots (coated with concrete). Most likely, you will not be able to do everything quickly: fold a pebble flowerpot in 1-2 hours. Then we do this: we just fasten the pebble to the solution, and coat it from the inside upon completion of the masonry. Then you get a monolithic inner surface. In the end, we make a border of concrete over the pebble. It will fix the last layer, add contrast to the product and, in operation, will not allow pebbles to fall off at the edges of the flowerpot.

You should not immediately grab onto the manufacture of a large flowerpot, you need to practice at the beginning on small pots. When you get a feel for the technology, you can move on to large products.

The larger the pebble, the faster and more convenient it is to make flowerpots. The main thing is not to press the solution deep into the stone masonry. From the inside, as I wrote above, it will need to be reinforced with a plastic mesh for greater strength.

Another option for making such flowerpots: you can first cast a flowerpot from concrete, and then cover it with pebbles around the perimeter, gluing it onto tile glue. But you need to think about the support at the bottom: cast a concrete disc of a larger diameter than a flowerpot, inserting a flowerpot with a hole into it. But this technology has a drawback: the surface will be less even due to the different size of the gravel.

In the end, the product is varnished on the outside with stone to give the effect of a wet stone.

Large plastic flowerpots are not cheap, because exclusive on the market and difficult to manufacture. And for one-time use of plastic flowerpots for them - it's expensive. Perhaps it would make sense for someone to make flowerpots of this size for sale.

Such art objects look exclusive for landscape design. They are made from natural stone - limestone and also on a solution. The jugs are laid out without external forms, using only a template cut from thin plywood and fixed on the pipe above the product. During the laying process, the piece is rotated to control the geometry.

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Photos are taken from open sources, from Yandex. Pictures

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