Craft Stepping Stones -  A Good Project for Children

Craft stepping stones are an innovative and creative way of equipping a garden or landscape with personalized accents. They also make great gifts and keepsakes, and can be created with any designs and a little bit of imagination.

Kits to make craft stepping stones are available in all good craft and art supply stores as well as through such websites, but it is just as convenient and easy to gather the supplies needed to make them at home from scratch. Such crafting also makes it cheaper than buying kits. Molds, cement, decorations and embellishments, are all that is needed to start making stepping stones.

Craft stepping stones are a good way of keeping children occupied while getting them to use their creativity and imagination. Minimal adult supervision is however necessary. When hand and foot prints are made into the stones, they make very good keepsakes, be it as family memorabilia or to be offered as personalized gifts to grandparents and relatives.

Many more designs than the conventional commercial stepping stones ones can be made. Different molds can be used and these need not be expensive or specific molds, since materials such as plastic saucers, cake pans, and even disposable aluminum pie tins can be used. These should be coated with a layer of petroleum jelly before the cement is scooped in.  As such, personalized designs and motifs can be created to fit any decorative garden or landscape theme. Little knick-knacks like beads and marbles can also be used to decorate the craft stepping stones. Discarded or left-over pieces of tiles can be used to make mosaic designs.

However, appropriate protection should be observed, especially when using cement. Rubber gloves, eye goggles, and breathing masks should be used, and it is advisable to wear pants and long-sleeved outfits when making craft stepping stones. When making hand or foot prints, that piece of the body should be coated with petroleum jelly beforehand.

Once finished, craft stepping stones should be allowed to set in the mold for 3 days and cured for a week before it is placed outside in the garden.