Daniel is out of school for the summer so we are officially a crew now. We decided to make a parking pad and incorporate our fascination with fossils. We started by breaking up a bunch of old concrete bags that had partially hardened with sledge hammers. After we pulverized the mix, we spread it out to make a base between three and five inches thick. We hosed this down and let it dry and harden up for a few days. Each of our fossil stones consist of two 80 lb. sacks of concrete, mixed stiff so there is no slump. We formed the stones with this mix and then laid ferns, leaves, cones, bark, flowers and whatever else we thought would make suitable fossils onto the freshly formed stone. We troweled these items down until the concrete formed a thin film over the top of them. Six to Eight hours we pulled the leaves and ferns out and waited until the next day to hose and clean the surface. Daniel used smooth, colorful stones that we picked up at the beach to make the stream bed. He is very particular about the placement, so this is his exclusive job. After the fossils are cured we will brush on a thinned down water base stain and then a coat of water based sealer. The final coat will consist of a glaze with green coloring and maybe we will add some black accents to highlight the fossils. We will publish more pictures when the job is complete. So far it is a really fun and cool project.
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