sb158′s Valley Garden

No, not the Creature From The Black Lagoon, though he might well have been made of it. Monster Mud is Joint Compound mixed with latex paint. Burlap, or some other material, is then soaked with Monster Mud and applied to a form to make whatever you want with it.
I first read about it on the Hypertufa forum at Gardenweb, as I’d been thinking about making some containers with hypertufa. Googled it, and found some very interesting ideas. Check it out here.
Sounded alot easier than messing with concrete, so I figured, what the heck, I’ll try it. One of the forums I read said to use masonry sealer to waterproof it. I have no idea if it will work, but I’m having fun trying it.
Here are some pics I took of the WIP. Warning: This post is image-heavy.

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Went to Big Orange and bought some joint compound, paint, drywall tape, and a paint stirrer attachment for the drill. This was highly recommended, as it takes about 30 minutes to mix it by hand. Too much like work!
I covered my cracked 12″ terracotta pot with a plastic trash bag, then wrapped it in a layer of dry drywall tape, just to make sure I could get the pot out when I was done.

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Made only a small amount at first, to test the process without making a huge mess.

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Here’s what it looks like all mixed up.

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And here’s what it looks like after I used up all the mix I’d made.

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I let it dry, then painted it with masonry sealer to waterproof it. I figure it may help if I waterproof every layer. After that dried, I wrapped it in chicken wire for some strength.

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I made more goop and just slopped it over the chicken wire to give the tape something to stick to.

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Then I used up my remaining goop to start the next layer of tape. The rest will have to wait until I buy more joint compound and paint. Since this post is already huge, I’ll continue this in a new post as it progresses.

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Tags: containers, Experimental, Monster Mud

This entry was posted by sb158 on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 3:42 PM and is filed under containers, Experimental. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.