Grandma's Idea

So every 4th of July weekend, my grandparents come up with some type of activity or craft for all of us grand-kids to do. We've had marshmallow shooters, bug houses, rubber band guns... and lots of others that I can't remember. Well, this summer my grandpa's activity was to bury "pirate treasure" (coins) in the yard and beach and then search for it with a metal detector he had picked up at a garage sale. This activity quickly became more of a challenge than anyone thought and the kids got bored as Grandpa and Uncle Tom took over the treasure hunt for the next hour. It was an awesome idea and activity, but the pirates just didn't want their treasure to be discovered by meddling kids, I guess.

Meanwhile, Grandma's activity for us was to decorate the rock wall lining the patio. She brought up some cheap acrylic paints and paintbrushes and shellac and a couple of books about painting animals and flowers onto rocks. Flowers and forest animals were just the beginning of our creations, and I found myself spending 7+ hours at the picnic table painting rocks that day. It was a little more popular with the girls, but the boys still contributed some neat creations. A couple of my favorite ones that I did were pretty neat because I found rocks that already had a shape of an animal in them and I just "painted them to life," so-to-speak. It was simple enough, paint the rocks, let them dry, shellac 'em and find a place for them in the wall. Enjoy :)

My cousin told me that I had drawn a picture of a horse for her a long time ago that she loved and hung on to for a long time, and so I told her I'd paint a horse rock for her. Unfortunately, this one turned out to be very fat and stubby looking, but at least you can still tell it's a horse!

This rock had a chunky, crystalline surface on the bottom left area and I thought it resembled something under water. The attempt here was to create a coral-like scene for the octopus. Also, there was no blue paint, so the water is purple, green, and white :) 

This one is by far my favorite and the one for which I am most proud! Look at the face and the shape the rock is - of course it was meant to be the face of a turtle! I think the shell rock lined up pretty nicely too, and the pebbles were easy enough to find for the feet. I used Gorilla Glue to attach the rocks, and this little baby is being kept safe inside of the cabin so it doesn't risk facing the elements lol. 

We made "name rocks" to keep at the stump. Ours is little because I branched off from the family names to get married  :)

Grandma really wanted someone to turn this particular rock into a rabbit. I wish I had a picture of all the rocks before we painted them, because I wonder how many others could have picked out the animals that we did when the rocks were "naked." So here's a white rabbit per Grandma's request. 

This bird isn't quite my favorite creation, but the lump in the middle looked like a wing to me. I don't love the proportions, but I think it works for what I had to work with. Because I wasn't able to use the whole rock, I just used black paint to accentuate the shape of the bird and camouflage the unused rock.  

This is another of  my favorites. I think someone told me to make an alligator, I don't really remember where the inspiration came from. I went on an "alligator hunt" trying to find the perfect rock, and I found two that I had to glue together. Isn't the body perfect?? Turns out it was a bigger rock and my cousin had broken it earlier, so it was an unintentional team effort. There's a third rock behind the "joint" to support the alligator. 

So it was a really fun project and it sort of reminds me of a 3D version of the scribble game since you need to find a picture, animal, object out of the raw material :)

Oh, PS... here's my husband's one and only rock creation, and a picture of a section of our rock wall:

Hope you enjoyed this crog! (craft blog haha)