Working It Wednesday: Garden Markers

This week my new project has been making Garden Markers! Now, I am not, have never been and likely will never be a gardener. Nope. This girl has black thumbs. I can't keep a plant alive to save my life. But, other people like to garden and two of those people actually sent me pictures of garden markers over the past week and suggested I make some. I've even had a couple people tag me on pictures of garden markers on Pinterest too. So, I figure, why not? Let's make some!

Normally the stones I use are relatively small in size since I use them for story stones but lucky for me, I had a few larger stones in my stockpile. If I end up keeping these in regular stock in my Etsy shop, I'll have to find a local place where I can buy larger stones. The first thing I had to do was paint them solid, bright colors. This step ended up being slightly annoying to me because I'm so used to painting story stones which typically only have one side needing to be painted whereas these stones needed paint on both sides. That meant I had to be patient and wait for the first side to dry before I could flip it over and paint the back side. But patience is a virtue, right? So I waited for paint to dry, flipped them to paint the back and then did it all over again when I decided they needed multiple coats of paint to make the colors more vibrant. 

Once all that was finally finished, I got to start working on the fun part-The details and decorating! With these being my first pass at garden markers I kept them fairly simple in design. If they end up being a popular item I may make them more elaborate. We will see how it goes. Once I had them all decked out, I applied a clear sealant to protect against fading from the sun. Overall these were easy enough to make (if you take out my annoyance at waiting for paint to dry) and I could easily make more. 

Just starting the decorative part of the project!

Want to see the finished product? They'll be up in my Etsy shop later this week and you can check them out here: www.wishesandwonderment.etsy.com