Stepping Stones Personalized

Family Crafts was the informative internet source I used for a quick tutorial on how to make stepping stones. If you look into making stones for your garden , you will find many resources. Another good tutorial can be found at The How-To Site.

A few summers ago, I made six stones from one bag of quick drying concrete and some dye, and they are still holding up well in our garden. I won't go into specific details of how to make the stepping stones, as the references will give you all that information. However, two quick notes from experience: 1) large plastic planter saucers heavily slathered with Vaseline are excellent for molding concrete; 2) do not use wooden items for embedding. (And remember to date your stones, so that archeologists in later years will know exactly when we Coloradans were busy stone building.)

Middle school friend Cassidy helped make eight more stepping stones from one 60 lb. bag of Quikrete, water, and one bottle of red concrete dye. Each stone is personalized in some unique way with plastic buttons and trinkets, ceramic flat pieces of found art, keyrings picked up from various vacations, foreign coins, pieces of colored glass, Scrabble tiles, glass beads and discarded jewelry embedded into the concrete. We liked the results. Cassidy will further color some of her stones with latex paints after the Quikrete dries completely.

Often, stones have a layer of chicken wire for added strength, although these stones are not likely to break into pieces. Cassidy and I did not bother to put wire reinforcement in the middle of our stones since they are for decoration, not pathways.

Cassidy at work and with completed stones:

For half a morning's time devoted to this project, and with a little help from a young friend, our gardens will soon welcome these new stepping stones.

Now it is time to start collecting objects again to make even MORE garden delights.