"A friend walked into my studio the other day, turned to me and said, "It always smells like candy in here." Maybe that's what I love about working with concrete. The smell, feel, and varying textures of concrete have certainly dictated the types of colors and shapes that I choose when making my vessels: colors like licorice black, chocolate brown, creamy white, and lemon lime. My love of baking has also come into play in how the concrete is manipulated. I find myself rolling out slabs of cement like pastry dough, then stacking layers of colored concrete like baklava and making roll-ups like ice-box cookies. These techniques have resulted in multi-colored concrete vessels that are made through a unique process of layering hand-cut colors of concrete in molds and wet-carving the green concrete. Each piece is finished with a water-proof sealant. The vessels may be used inside or out as serving platters, fruit bowls, vases, birdbaths, or decorative additions to the home or patio. If used outdoors they should be protected from freeze/thaw cycles."
-Deborah Brackenbury

Glenda, Looks like white portland cement,white or light colored sand and black colorant. Make two mixes: one white sand/portland mix and one black sand/portland mix. Use an old rolling pin or dowel to roll each mix flat, cut cubes with a knife, place in your mold, gently push from side of mold to join cubes. Don't mess with it too much because the black colorant will get on the white cubes. You could cut and shape the edges later. Maybe the edges are just rough shaped and ground down after complete cure. Maybe there is some serious sanding going on. Maybe some fired clay to give it some stickiness? Yep, you can use fired clay but not too much. Or arcylic admix? Are we going to see some great art bowls from you?!!! Billie

Thanks for the pic Glenda. Really neat.

Deb

I wonder how Ms Brackenbury maintains the strength where she joins the pieces without getting any significant mixing of the colours? Lovely stuff in my view.