Making Faux Bricks

I have a lot of bricks in my backyard and since I don't know how and don't have the desire to learn to cut bricks, I decided to make some faux bricks to fill in some spots. I use mortar as my go to cement of choice. No rocks and it just seems to be all around a better choice. I cut strips of cardboard to keep the mortar off of the surrounding bricks and other things I don't want it adhering to.... then just simply pour in the mortar and let it set up.
 
Once the mortar has set up I pull out the cardboard and just slather on some paint. I use a brighter than what you would normally use because the sun bleaches it out to a perfect shade in a few weeks.

I mix the paint with a lot of water as I paint the faux brick. This helps it have a graduated paint effect for a better looking paint job.
 
Once I've painted the faux brick, I quickly toss on some dirt to the newly painted area and rub it in.
 
 I do this to several at a time...

Once you sweep away the dirt, the paint is dry and your bricks are all done.

Here are some more faux bricks I've made. The paint has already faded on these and they seem to match the surrounding real bricks pretty darn good... The triangle and pie shapes are the faux bricks

Here is a little one with the cardboard still needing to be pulled out...

I still have a few more faux bricks to paint, as you can see below.... It won't take long at all to do, I'm sure much faster than cutting a real brick!

Here are some random photos of my back yard... I recently bought a bunch of pond rocks and placed them in my yard.

I think it really sets off everything nicely.

An added bonus is it helps keep the black bark in place.

I also fired up the rock fountain that is in the lagoon area. I am needing to find some algae solution that is pet safe so I don't have to clean it out this summer.

 I'm having a lot of fun in my yard!

 Thirty days... thirty days... thirty days.... until the pirate party! *gasp*

big hugs,