Craft tip
Painting stones: creative leisure activities for children (and adults)
With acrylic, oil or poster colors, stones are transformed into works of art
© cagkansayin / Getty Images
Necessity makes you inventive – especially when it comes to the search for creative ideas to keep your children busy in a meaningful way. A nice distraction is painting stones. Not only for young up-and-coming artists, but also for their parents.
Painting is a meaningful occupation in many ways: It promotes the gross and fine motor skills of your children, stimulates creativity and at the same time trains the spatial imagination and the ability to concentrate. Apart from that, it’s just fun to let off steam artistically with the help of bright colors. This also applies to adults who like to use brushes or pens to distract themselves from the stress of everyday life. Because the fact is: painting has a meditative and relaxing effect on the body. It is hardly surprising why more and more people are painting stones: The three-dimensional works of art can be used as decorative style elements in the house and garden – or convey an important message.
DIY: Five practical tips for painting stones
Take your children outside and collect a handful of stones that are nice and flat and round – unless you already have a particular motif in mind for which you need a square or oval format. Decorative stones go too.
Before painting the stones, it is important to remove all dirt and grime with a fine brush – so that the surfaces are then nice and clean and smooth, so that the colors adhere better to them.
Put enough newspaper under the stones before you start To paint kick off. Depending on which motif you choose, you can prime the surfaces with white beforehand – then the colors will shine more brightly.
To paint the stones oil and Acrylics especially good. There are also special ones waterproof pens and Metallic markerwith which you can draw finer strokes and lines than you would with a brush.
So that the small works of art can withstand any weather and do not lose color, it is important to cover the stones with a transparent Clear coat to be sprayed – otherwise the motifs would fade due to the sun’s rays and rain.
Painted stones set an example in Hamburg
If you take a walk in the street “Alter Güterbahnhof” these days, the colorful stone snake immediately catches the eye: Many Hamburg citizens, large and small, have painted dozens of stones and lined them up next to each other as a symbol of community in the Corona crisis. A little guide invites every walker to take part in the action and paint even more stones – so that the line gets longer and longer. Even the children one star– Employees have already contributed and created their own artwork. You can see what it looks like live in our photo gallery:
For adults: painting stones is becoming a trend
As the campaign in Hamburg just proves, more and more people are interested in the new trend hobby: painting stones. In northern Germany in particular, more and more virtual groups are currently forming in social networks, in which members can exchange ideas about their stone works of art: In addition to the classic decorating with pictures, motivational sayings and positive sayings are also very popular with adults. These are applied either with the above Pens – or with the help of fine brushes and Acrylic paint. If you want to try painting yourself in stone, you will find the inspiration you need on Pinterest.
You might also be interested in:
This article contains so-called affiliate links. Further information are available here.