A dream of mine when we bought this house last year was to have a statue of Mary in the yard with a little grotto and flowers all around her. Not having the budget for such a thing, I turned to the place I always do- our local Buy Nothing Group.

For those who aren’t familiar, a buy nothing group is a Facebook based group that focuses on community building through a gift economy. If you have something that your family no longer needs, you can post a picture of the item, and your neighbors who are interested can let you know. You then pick who you’d like to gift to, and then they pick it up from you, usually with a porch pick up. You can also ask for things- so if you need a cup sugar or a teaspoon of an odd spice, you can post a request. You can also lend out- for example, we’ve lent a carpet shampooer and borrowed a carseat cover for a trip.

We’ve given away lots and been gifted lots in return, and one of the best things it has done is help us get to know our neighbors and build into our community (buy nothing groups are town-based, so you can only belong where you live). We all have things we don’t need or don’t use, and I love giving ours away to people we actually know who will actually cherish them,

Anyways, when we moved in, I posted asking if anyone had a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary that they didn’t want, and sure enough, there was a family a few blocks away who had one. They had bought a home from a man who was a stone carver and left a beautiful statue of Mary on a limestone pedestal in their yard. They weren’t Catholic and were happy to pass her along to a family who would love her.

Next I asked if anyone had a ceramic bathtub or some bricks, stones, or pavers lying around unused. And sure enough, another family had just ripped out a border of these lovely wavy stone pavers as they redid their yard. Win. I loaded up our minivan and headed home!

My next request was for tiles and/or stained glass as I had it in mind to create a mosaic . . . And wow, did my neighbors come through. Lots of people had mosaic supplies that they weren’t using and one neighbor even had a collection of stained glass shards left over from her own projects that she was happy to give away.

As I looked over the wavy pavers and the stained glass, I knew right away that I wanted to create an ocean themed mosaic for our Mary. The Ave Maris Stella is one of my very favorite prayers, and I thought I could create a grotto where it looked like Mary was emerging from the waves. So I chose mirror shards and stained glass in shades of blues, greens, and purples and set to work.

We did purchase the glue needed to attach the glass to the pavers, and borrowed a tile cutter so I could get them the right sizes. The lowest level is darkest and then the glass lightens up as it goes up. It took hours and hours and hours and a lot of trial and error to get the vision right, but all that sweat and hard work was totally worth it in the end.

After the tiles were placed, I needed to grout them, because after all that work, I wanted this to stand the test of time.

Grouting is a lot of work, and kind of messy, and it was my first time attempting it. Here’s what I learned- the tiles that I grouted while they were in place vertically were MUCH harder to do, whereas it was a simple process to grout each paver individually before they were built into the grotto. Lesson learned.

I had to pause my grouting process because it got cold last fall, but I was able to finish it once the weather warmed up this spring

Grout leaves a grout haze over the tiles, and so I used a toothbrush and a grout haze remover to remedy that- again, super simple.

And then it was time to put it all together. This was the part that I needed Mark for. He took the lead on mortaring the pieces together in the spot that I had chosen for the grotto, and I could not have done it without him (those pieces are heavy and I’m not as patient with leveling as he is).

The next step was putting Mary in the place of honor. She is also super heavy, so Mark took care of that too. Thank goodness though, because it means the kids can’t knock her over accidentally.

And here in all it’s glory is our finished project!

In case anyone is interested in creating their own DIY Mary grotto, here are the materials we used to make ours:

Amazon links are affiliate links, see my about page for the full disclosure.

As I said above, most of the materials for our grotto came from the buy nothing group- the stained glass, the mirror tiles, the tile cutter, the pavers, and the Mary statue. But we did purchase the following,

• grout: I used natural gray, pre-mixed grout.
• mortar and a trowel
• glue for tiles: I used Gorilla Glue in clear because I was using stained glass. Make sure whatever you choose is waterproof because your grotto will be outside. (You’ll also need a gun thing for the glue.)
• rubber gloves for when you’re working with the grout and adhesives

The last piece of the puzzle will be the flowers that will surround her. It’s a little early to be planting here in Michigan (it snowed today), so those will come soon, but I am beyond thrilled with the results so far, and will definitely share pictures once she has flowers.