How to Make Rocks For Painting Rocks with Concrete
I figured out how to make rocks for painting rocks with concrete and it’s the coolest thing EVER! I can stain them any color and have a fun base for ANY rock painting idea!
How to Make your own Rocks For Rock painting
Here at Ruffles and Rain Boots, we love hand painted rock art. But ever since me and the kiddo started painting, the most hard part is finding rocks. We’ve persevered, though and found a way. Until lately when all our regular haunts seem to have run dry of good painting rocks. So, I started researching and found a way to make your own rocks for rock painting!
RELATED READING: PAINTED ROCK INSPIRATION FOR KIDS
These concrete rocks are so easy to make and I had 6 done in less than 10 minutes, let them set overnight and we were ready to go! How cool is that?! If you’re ready to get started making some DIY rocks and spreading those hand-painted kindness rocks throughout your neighborhood, let’s get started.
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Tips to Make DIY Rocks
- Let’s start by having a little clarification about these “fake” rocks as my daughter calls them. They’re a great idea and they’re really simple. No chicken wire or rebar necessary. Just some quick set portland cement from Home Depot or Lowes and a handy rock mold.
- If you want to make your rocks the various colors like I did, do I have news for you! It’s so simple and it doesn’t take a special kind of paint. You can use any water based paint to stain concrete in such a small batch.
- Because the paint/stain has a chemical reaction with the cement, you will have spotting and weirdiness that you probably wouldn’t want in a concrete floor you were staining, but these are rocks. They don’t have to be perfect.
- If you want to paint your stained concrete rocks, guess what?! You can use any paints that you want! Just like when you’re painting river rocks, there’s no limitations with these artificial rocks. You can spray paint for an ombre, you can do small details with acrylic paint, then seal with mod podge or crafting lacquer.
- One of my favorite things to do is put our favorite stained concrete rocks on display on our front porch on a little bed of peat moss. Goes so well with pumpkins for the fall, flowers for the spring or whatever you do for winter and summer!
How Do I Make Concrete Rocks?
I’m so glad you asked. Below is our written tutorial.
Rocks for Rock Painting
This tutorial for how to make rocks for rock painting is super simple. And these concrete rocks are seriously perfect for painting anything. They're smooth, tough and pretty. Everything you need in a DIY rock.
Materials
- 8 cups Concrete
- 1 1/2 cup water-based teal paint
- 1 1/2 cup water-based pink paint
- 1 1/2cup water-based purple paint
- 1 tspn fine silver or gold glitter
- Craft Lacquer or Modpodge
Tools
- Rock Mold
- 4 Disposable Cups
- 4 Disposable Spoons or Sticks
- Disposable Butter Knife
Instructions
- Sprinkle the glitter in the mold, just a little in each cavity.
- Separate cement into the cups evenly.
- Place 1 1/2 cups of each color in a single cup. I used the Unicorn Spit brand paint for the purple and teal. For the pink, I combined red and white tempura paints.
- Stir each cup separately, until the color is consistent. The cement should be the consistency of pancake batter--if it is not, add more paint. It will be a lot thinner than you think it should be. But just keep going.
- Place 1 cup of concrete into each mold cavity.
- Jiggle the mold a bit to knock out any air pockets.
- Using the butter knife, flatten the top of each mold and wipe away any excess concrete.
- Allow to sit overnight to set.
- Pop out of mold.
- You are NOT going to like how muted the colors are and you're going to be sad they look so dim. Don't fret.
- If you want to paint something on the rocks, this is the time to do so.
- Coat the rock with lacquer and allow to dry. Watch those colors pop!
- Enjoy!
Notes
For more fun rock painting inspiration, visit RufflesandRainBoots.com
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More Rock Painting Ideas You Might Like
- Harry Potter Rock Painting Tutorial – Of all the rocks we’ve ever made, the kiddo loves her Harry Potter rocks the most. They’re magical.
- How to Start Rock Painting – If you’ve never painted rocks before, this is the 101 to get you started right!
- Rock Painting Video Tutorials – All the videos we’ve done for all the best (and most fun) rock painting ideas ever.
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A little late to the game .. but did your Quikrete have GRAVEL in it? My bag looks like yours but .. shocked to see the gravel. Still made some rocks but not my preference to have gravel in the mixture .
Yes, Quickrete is a mix of sand, gravel, cement, and stone, so it should. You can also use cement, but both pours will have gravel in them. Mine doesn’t look apparent in the finished piece.
I LOVE THIS IDEA! I had even thought about it myself. I ALREADY have my Quikrete but I’m still waiting for my molds in the mail. I would have never thought of adding color to them. BRILLIANT!! Way to go Sarah. Keep up the great work and I look forward to seeing more ideas from you. I am a rock painter now, my friend introduced me to the idea last year, and I went BERZERK! It makes me so happy to spread kind messages, paint cartoons or animals and hide my rocks. So fulfilling. Thank you again.
@Jerri McBee, I was currently at Michael’s and I found molds in the paint section near the brushes! Ranged between 15 an 20 dollars I believe.