In contrast to the polymer clay bricks I made for the facade, these floor bricks are in fact authentic terracotta bricks produced in dollhouse scale. The herringbone pattern was inspired by the floor in the real-life enoteca, and it took around 600 bricks to complete. The process was simple, although gluing each brick down individually was rather time-consuming. In addition, this pattern naturally required some pieces along the edges to be cut to fit, and I used a sturdy pair of side cutters to do this. (The uneven border along the walls will be covered up by either shelving or baseboards.)
Once all the bricks had been glued in place, I mixed dark brown paint with mortar to fill in the cracks. I love how this gave the bricks a dirty, weathered appearance.
One of the drawbacks to using these bricks was that there were some minor discrepancies in size. The mortar camouflages the gaps nicely, but there was nothing I could do about the variance in thickness. It didn’t take me long to embrace this imperfection, however, given that Venezia (where the actual enoteca is located) is famously sinking—it makes sense that there would be a slight rippling effect as the ground sinks unevenly into the lagoon.
