Sometimes I help my friend with her vacation rentals, specifically in the yards and gardens. (What is the difference? “Garden” sounds nicer, but when I do the yardwork, I think of it as “yardening”.)
Recently we laid some fake grass (“artificial turf” is the real name) for a place to put up a children’s play set. We are figuring out how to conceal the edges, putting down weed barrier and planting all sorts of things around the “grass”.
Next, we will add stepping stones to lead from the front of the house to the side area with the playset (remember when there were monkey-bars, swings, slides, and merry-go-rounds, all separate pieces of equipment, with asphalt beneath? How did we survive such barbarism??)
Because we want it to be enticing to kids, we want stepping stones that are inviting. After kicking around all sorts of ideas, we chose painted cement circles. This was a frugal decision, because we are careful with the home owner’s money.
Trail Guy set up a temporary table for painting the stepping stones in the sunshine.
I have many gallons of paint for a primer coat.
The paint dried fast, so I was able to put two coats on within an hour and a half.
My friend and I bought small cans of blue, red, and yellow so I can mix many colors. We learned that with small cans, the strongest brightest colors aren’t possible. All the tint needed to make the colors bright would cause a little can to overflow. So, we got the brightest primary colors that the hardware store could mix for us.
As a professed color junkie, I just dove into the colors. Our ideas were many, but thinking about the time involved, we settled on one solid step per color, and the rest could be decorated a little more elaborately.
I began with the first design, an obvious idea for February 14, the day I painted.
Then I just kept going. I painted the 6 very solidly, and messed around with blending colors on top of the other 6. It wasn’t particularly successful, but it was a fun way to experiment and get a base coat on the white primer.
This is really fun. When we figure out how to decorate the non-solids, I hope I remember to photograph them and blog about it. And if they look good leading through the “garden” to the “grass”, I might show you that too.
It might be a bit of an odd job, but I continue to. . .
make art people can understand of places and things they love for prices that won’t scare them.
P.S. Is this art??
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P.S. If you run out of design ideas, I bet your blog readers could come up with a bunch! I just thought of another–a treble clef or musical note!
Sharon, I ended up with a few images on the stones but most are just plain. They are meant to be stepped on, and will need repainting fairly often, so the easier, the better.
In my mind, a garden consists of deliberately planted food or flowers. A yard is the area around a structure. IOW, all gardens are in yards, but not all yards are gardens. IOW, I wouldn’t call the area around your cabin a garden.
Beautiful stepping stones, but do you plan to add an image to each stone? I would, even if it’s just a plain flower or tree. But then again, I’m not an artist. Visual artist, that is. I do think of myself as an audio artist wannabe.
Of course it’s art! It’s designed, it’s adding color, it’s your creation!
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