The Craftiest Workshop

My husband has been trying to figure out a way to make concrete planters and benches for the garden. I suggested that perhaps he start with a smaller project and try to make some decorative stones.
While shopping at the thrift stores one day, I came across some themed cake pans that I thought would work well as stepping stones in a garden. Some pans I found and some my sister found for me. We ended up with Hollie Hobby, Winnie the Pooh, Butterfly, Flower, Jack o Lantern, Christmas Tree, Castle and Rudolph. I liked the castle idea to later be incorporated into a fairy garden. I also wanted Winnie the Pooh…when I think of him and honey I think bees. The last one we decided to try in the first batch was Holly Hobbie.

He had bags of concrete but it was not the quick drying variety. He mixed it and poured it into the cake pans after spraying them well with WD-40. He also added a piece of metal fencing into each one kind of like rebar in a poured concrete foundation. After about 24 hours he was able to remove the concrete shapes from their molds but left them outside leaning on a piece of wood to dry further for about a week. It is important to mention that you need to keep spraying the concrete so it doesn’t crack from drying too fast. Here are the first two out of the molds.

We decided to buy some concrete sealer as the base coat that goes on white but dries clear. After that I used matte black exterior paint to paint all of them.

Here is Winnie the Pooh after the black coat.

I would recommend using small pieces of wood to lift the concrete off the cardboard when painting. I painted the front first but flipped it too soon and some of the wet paint pulled cardboard onto the concrete. One of those spots is by his butt.

The next step was to dry brush exterior coloured paint onto the spots that you want to be certain colours. This means putting paint onto your brush and then brush cardboard until there is pretty much no paint left on your brush. Only then do you start brushing on the black concrete. It puts very little paint on but, because it is against the black, the colour comes out quite easily. You keep doing this until it is dark enough.

I only had three small paints for concrete from Michael’s: cream, denim blue, and red. I had previously bought a yellow indoor/outdoor paint sample from Home Depot. We also had a white exterior paint from a previous project.

Here are my painted Pooh and Hollie, both leaning against a tree stump in the garden.

The castle will temporarily go in front of the old chest that I plant flowers in.

I decided to touch up a garden statue that I have of a boy playing the saxophone. I got it as a gift one year for Mother’s Day when my kids were small…it might be twenty years old. It has been through many moves with us. The colours had faded so much that the entire statue was almost white. I should have taken a before photo because there is a remarkable difference. I managed to blend the few colours I had to create a few other shades.

Now that we know that the cake pans and concrete work well, Chris will be making some of the others for me to paint. I especially would like a Jack-o-lantern for the fall and some of the Christmas ones for next December.