Stenciled Garden Rocks

Stenciled garden rocks are a quick and easy garden project or gift idea. Personalize with monograms, leaves or your favorite team logo. Step-by-step instructions and photos.

Spring peaked out this weekend for a brief visit and we took advantage of it to do some outdoor projects. I pinned this stenciled garden rocks idea from BHG.com over a year ago. I can’t remember why I didn’t get to it at the time, but I knew I wanted to do it for my mom as a gift for Mother’s Day. She enjoys gardening and has spent a lot of time getting the beds in her yard to look picture perfect. My grandma had the most amazing flower garden, so my mom comes by it honestly. I unfortunately seem to have a black thumb so far, but I’ll keep trying!

This project took me less than an hour once I had my stencils created.

Supplies:

• Garden rocks with flat surfaces
• Stencils
• Painters or masking tape
• Newspaper or other paper for covering your rocks
• Spray paint made for outdoor use

Rock selection: You can use any type of rocks that are not very porous. I used some we had in our yard as well as some I purchased from our local garden center. The largest was about 10 inches tall x 6 inches wide. A few were about 7-8″x5-6″ Larger would also work well. I probably wouldn’t go much smaller.

Stencils: I created my stencils with my Silhouette Cameo. If I hadn’t, I probably would have cut my stencils out of contact paper. The original instructions said to use regular paper and spray adhesive. I would be a little concerned about the sticky residue from that. For the monogram, I used the Times New Roman font from my computer. For all other shapes like the leaves, I found them free online by searching Google images.

Stencil Placement: Place and adhere your stencil on your rock. Then to protect your rock from overspray outside of your stencil, use painters tape or masking tape to secure sections of newspaper around the outside of the stencil to cover the rest of your rock.

Paint: Using spray paint made for outdoor use, lightly spray over your stencil in even strokes. I did 2-3 coats depending on the paint color/rock color combo. Wait 10-15 minutes between coats. For colors, I used black, copper, and cream.

Finish:  Once mostly dry, remove your stencils and paper. I like removing while it still has a light tackiness to the paint. I feel like I get a cleaner line.

I made a “B” monogram for my mom and then a large maple leaf and cluster of elm leaves.

Then I decided to use up the rest of the rocks I had selected to make some for our own yard. For us I made an Iowa Hawkeye (Go Hawks!), an “H” monogram, and a cluster of maple leaves. Other ideas I considered were “Est. 2000” for our wedding year or our address.

How about you – are you making any handmade gifts for Mother’s Day?