Painting Pebbles

I love painting on pebbles and this is an activity I have enjoyed several times during mys girls' childhood. Having a purpose for collecting pebbles from a beach is always nice as I can't help filling my pockets with pebbles anyway. Over the years, the girls' paintings have advanced considerably from pebbles splodged with bright colours but no recognisable image, to convincing pieces of art.

Last year, for example, we chose a large flat rock each and painted them as rock pools using acrylic paints. After coating them in clear outdoor varnish, I wriggled them into the gravel in the back garden as completely unexpected reminders of the sea-side in our urban garden.

This year, I saw some cute fruit and vegetable painted pebbles on Pinterest and suggested to the girls that we could make some markers for out veg garden. It was fun walking along the beach, picking up pebbles and saying things such as, "This one is courgette shaped." It was fun again a few days later to tip the pebbles out on the table and try to remember what vegetable we had thought they had resembled when we picked them up!

A little bit of head scratching later, we figured it out and got stuck in. Again we used acrylic paints, painting a nice strong base colour first then leaving that to dry thoroughly before adding the details. Then after several hours of drying, we used black pen to finish the faces off boldly. We just need to add the varnish before we take them out to the garden.