Looks like a jungle floor....

We finished the patio today. I used 3 different colors to highlight the leaves. We decided to highlight about five percent of the leaves, since there were so many. If we had done every single one, we'd have been there for days. Not to mention my knees, which are muttering at me now, despite a dose of ibuprophen. I am a weenie. My knees and worse, my back, do NOT appreciate it when I crawl around on the concrete. Thank goodness I don't have to do it often. Anyway, here are a few pictures of the job.

Here are my tools for tinting. Very technical huh? I only wish I had thought to bring a smaller paint brush. Some of the leaves could have used a more delicate touch, but oh well.



Here is a native maple leaf done in walnut brown. I love these colors together. Nicely muted.

This shows one leaf in each color I used. The colors are basically a wash. I wanted to keep the translucent qualities of a stain, without all the rinsing and scrubbing involved, so I used concrete color instead. It's possible to make nice variations using different strengths of color mix. This whole slab is pretty monochrome. We added a green this time instead of just rust and brown. I kind of like the green. It was very difficult for me to get good pictures. This patio is totally in the shade most of the day, so the colors don't pop like they would in the sun, but at least you can get an idea.

I think I am most pleased with this particular leaf. The color was translucent enough to be able to see some of the brown and cream beneath the green. I am very happy with the look. It makes me want to reach down and pick it up. You can see the detail better on the larger version. When the sealer hit it, it just jumped out off the slab. YAY!

I wish there was some good way to light this patio. It is difficult to show the true colors. The antherium leaf is terracotta, and the two ficus leaves to the right are walnut brown.

This is another of the weird ones that jump out at you instead of looking impressed. Crazy huh?

Man, I really love this one. I wouldn't mind a whole patio with just maple leaves. We have a bunch of different ones, including some huge Washing State Maple leaves that are fantastic. We pulled the texture off of the actual leaves, and the washingtons are enormous. I am not kidding. We have I think 4 and they start at sixteen inches and go to over twenty five. We had someone send us some fresh leaves and were laughing when the box was delivered. It was way bigger than we thought it should be... How many did they send, a *thousand*??? They sent about ten, and we were shocked when we saw them. Here are a couple of the stamps, along with the two stamps we used on this patio.The top and bottom leaves were made from maple trees in our yard, and are the ones we used for this job. Some day I will go to Washington and see the size of a tree that can make a leaf that size. I can't even imagine it.