Craft Review: Family Fun Magazine "Write It In Stone"

The May 2011 issue of Family Fun Magazine has a lot of great ideas, and we tried one out today... "Write It In Stone." For this project, you need...

Letter stickers
Smooth, light-colored, flat stones
Acrylic paint and brush
*Exacto knife (this is my add)
Outdoor sealer

Step One: Adhere the letter stickers onto the clean, dry stones

Step Two: Gently brush on two coats of acrylic paint, letting
the paint dry completely after each coat.

With the stones I used, some were a darker color, some lighter. I tried to make sure the girls painted a lighter color of paint on a dark stone, and a darker color of paint on a light stone to give a little more conrast to the finished product.

 

I got creative and added some extra decoration to our larger stones.

Step three: Remove the stickers...

Now this is where it gets complicated. Because to just "remove the stickers"... well it didn't work that way for us. See the blank spot on that stone? That's supposed to be a letter "M". When we removed the sticker, all of the surrounding paint came, too. Thankfully, this was my practice stone...

So I used an exacto knife to cut out each sticker. Some letters were
more difficult to extract, but with a little patience, I got it done.
Of course, this was a job for Mom, and not for the kids. I did have to
get my paint back out and fix a couple of letters, like putting the
center back into a letter "e".

Step Four: Apply three coats of sealer, letting it dry completely
between applications.

All in all, this was a fun project for the girls. They always enjoy anything that involves paint. Just know that removing the sticker isn't as easy as Family Fun implies it will be. But with an exacto knife and some patience, the finished product turned out really cool. My four big stones, when the three clear coats are applied and dry, will go outside by our vegetable garden. And who knows where I might find the rest.

"The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the power that saves me, and my place of safety." Psalm 18:2