Stepping Stones for Father's Day

Since money is extremely limited this year and we still wanted to be able to give Cheesehead a Father's Day gift, we decided to make him something home made. Home made gifts are my favorites! What better thing could we make for him than something for our new garden?

I thought I'd share a brief explantaion of the steps we did to make this project.

Materials needed: Molds for stones (we used ice cream buckets, Vinyl Cement Patch, Water, Decorations to put on stones, Container for mixing, Stir stick
Optional materials: Contact Paper, Permanent marker, Scissors

This project can be done in a couple of different ways.

We made ours by tracing a pattern on contact paper to keep the decorations in place when the patch was poured over it. This method makes the decoration become even with the surface of the stepping stone, but may leave a sticky residue behind once the contact paper is removed.

On a side note, make sure the template you're using is actually the correct size prior to creating your design or you may end up doing some unanticipated extra work.



Then we cut the pattern out, peeled the backing off, and placed our decorations on the sticky side of the contact paper.

You can put the decorations on top of the mix if you prefer to skip this step, but it tends to get much messier as the vinyl cement will get on your fingers.

Decorations can include anything you like. If it will be outdoors it should be some weather proof material such as glass aquarium pieces, aquaium gravel, stones, beads, or plastic chunks.



I found this whole tub of plastic shapes at Salvation Army a couple of years ago. They only cost 50 cents! In total this whole project cost us less than $8.00. We could have made more stepping stones, but I only had four ice cream buckets. I think we probably could have made at least twelve with the amount of mixture we had.



Once your pattern is complete, place it in the bottom of the mold.

When you make the mixture, be sure you follow the directions on the vinyl cement package or your mixture may be hard to mix throughly. Once the mixture is an even consistency throughout, you are ready to pour in into the molds.



If the stones are not poured thick enough, they will break if stepped on. I poured about 2 to 3 inches of mix into each ice cream bucket. (Do not use an ice cream bucket lid if you plan on actually using it as a real stepping stone, it's not thick enough!)



We allowed these to cure in the garage for a week before removing them from the molds. If you look at the thinner one, you can see the difference between laying the decorations on top and having them in the cement. It seemed to work best to have a flat surface exposed if making the stepping stones with the contact paper method.

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy