Painted Rocks: Turning a nuisance into a work of art

As I may have mentioned in previous postings, I have a huge problem with rocks in my garden!  I live near the Chehalis river so I think my yard is just an old river bed from thousands of years ago.  It's not like there are a few rocks here and there, they are everywhere!  And they are big, too!

So I finally decided that I needed to make the rocks that I have useful in some way.  I have never really liked the kind of garden art that I have seen at retail garden centers and other home decor stores and when I did find something that I liked, the price was usually too high for what it was.  So why not paint the rocks into garden decor and markers for the vegetable garden.

Paint brushes, acrylic paints, and the recently washed rocks.

Before I got started painting, I washed all of the dirt off each rock with a sponge and dried them off.  I used acrylic paint as my medium as I am hoping that it will do well out in the weather once the rocks go back outside.

Applying the paint was a little tedious as there are a lot of pores and cracks along the surface.

Painting the rocks was very enjoyable.  I chose a few different ideas and just went ahead and painted with out worrying too much if they were "perfect" looking.  I especially enjoyed the chili pepper as I am getting excited about actually trying to grow them this spring.

Sunflower

Carrot marker

As you can see, I painted four rocks so far.  Two of them will be markers and the other two (sunflower and blue swirl) will be garden art that I will place in my front garden bed.  This was very easy and anyone could do it.  What I really like is that now I will actually seek out the rocks that will look best painted!

Next post:  Pepper time!