How to Make a Labyrinth for Your School's Art Gallery

This was a project I did for my English class at school, inspired by Kiteman's Labyrinth instructables.

Link.

I've tried to be quick and to the point with the text, because I know that although the instructables with tons and tons of writing are usually the most informative ones, they're also usually the one's that get overlooked fastest.

Step 1: Calculations

In this step, I did a lot of math. I figured out what the area of the labyrinth would be, and how much I would need of each material.

At this point I also made a prototype in the front yard.

Step 2: Get Some Bricks

For this part of the process, my mom and I headed off to the landscape supply. 160 bricks, three bags of gravel, and 700 pounds later, we had our supplies. The bricks were for the edges of the labyrinth, and the gravel for the middle.

Step 3: Unload

Bricks in trunk, we headed off to the school. After at least five wheelbarrow trips, and three near crashes, the bricks were lined up in the gallery. Woo-hoo!

Step 4: Landscape Fabric, Bricks, and Gravel

The next step was to make a nine-by-nine protective sheet for the floor. We accomplished this with one and a half rolls of landscape fabric, and half of a roll of duct tape.

After the landscape fabric was down, we set the bricks up as the labyrinth's outline, and tweaked it.

When the bricks finally looked right, I poured the gravel into the labyrinth's outline to make the path. Then we smoothed the gravel out to make a nice, even layer.

The last part of this step was to trim the landscape fabric around the labyrinth.

Step 5: Take-Away Rocks

Part of my idea was to have something for visitors to take away. After a little thought, I decided that rocks with words, letters of the alphabet, or pictures would be good for this.

Originally I was going to stencil letters of the alphabet and mini labyrinths onto pebbles, but it soon became clear that this would be too difficult. I considered stamping the rocks, but eventually resolved just to use pens. I also abandoned the idea of using letters, and decided to use words (and symbols) that (I thought are) meaningful. My list included:

energy, inspire, eternity, invent, learn, illuminate, adapt, mystery, cherish, love, peace, unity, treasure, nurture, create, creativity, renew, transform, rejoice, soar, contemplate, truth, beauty, and meditate

...as well as some others. Once I had my list, all that was left to do was to draw on the rocks.

Finally, I placed the rocks in a pretty bowl I had picked up at Ikea, and we were good to go.

Step 6: Poem

The penultimate step was to write a moving poem vaguely pertaining to labyrinths. This done, I printed it up on some parchment-like paper, cut it out, and went to find a rock.

I chose a large, flat rock from the beach and slathered it with clear medium (glue). Once the medium was on, I placed the poem on the rock and covered the whole thing with medium.