Rock painting

Last weekend we drove down to Winchelsea beach and collected some pebbles for the rock painting we planned to do this week. Winchelsea is a vast expanse of (almost always deserted) pebbles, so perfect for some quiet beach combing. Interestingly, if you've never been to Winchelsea, the town is actually two miles from the beach, as the original town was swallowed up by the sea in a storm in the 13th century. When they rebuilt it, they chose the top of the nearest large hill to ensure that they couldn't find their houses washed away again. Because of their hilltop location Winchelsea has stunning views in every direction. It's one of the most utterly adorable and very English towns we've ever visited.

We bought acrylic paints for the purpose of rock painting right at the start of the holidays and then waited for a warm day when we had no other plans (doing craft activities outside is fairly essential due to the presence of my husband trying to work in one of the open-plan rooms downstairs and a large puppy who has yet to learn not to try and gobble something up the moment it drops on the floor...it is a far from ideal arrangement for the summer holidays). You can see from how brown my children are in the photo below that we have spent a lot of time outside!

Before lunch we enjoyed looking on Pinterest for rock-paining inspiration (there's a lot of it!). We then  spent over six hours painting stones and became so absorbed in our task that when we finally packed away (purely because we ran out of pebbles) my daughter exclaimed: I haven't eaten since lunch time and it's nearly 7pm! This was indeed miraculous, because my children seem to ask for food on an hourly basis during the holidays. This was such a lovely, enjoyable thing to do and so different from painting on paper (which I don't overly enjoy) as there's something more manageable about having a miniature canvas size dictated by the stone.

These were the tiniest things I painted - the policeman is just a bit bigger than my husband's thumb nail.

 My children enjoyed painting a selection of minions from Despicable Me.

And we each painted a house, after falling in love with the tiny villages we'd seen on Pinterest. My daughter also painted this seascape:

While I painted a landscape:

And this cat.

My son made monster rocks with googly eyes, owls and small mice. While my daughter made a bear in a forest and a 'welcome' stone.

Later they named each stone and played the 'Grandmother's Tray' game, where they hid one of the stones and the other person had to guess which was missing. 

We plan to revisit this activity the moment we have some more stones.

Just in case you're interested in painting some rocks yourself, here's what we did: 

• We used Newton & Windsor acrylic paints. Acrylics are fantastic for this as they dry in minutes and if you make a mistake you can paint straight over it, irrespective of what colour it was originally (so white can paint over black in one easy coat). 
• We used specialist fine acrylic paintbrushes for intricate painting and an assortment of random old paintbrushes for the less detailed work. 
• We bought Pilot gold and silver markers with an extra fine point (the type that you shake before use), which was fantastic for adding sparkly detail. 
• For eyes and fine black outlines we used a very fine Micron pen. Don't do this. Micron pens are fantastic for using as a very fine permanent marker on fabric and paper, however, dry paint will block the nib as they're very sensitive to dust particles (I've since read this on the manufacturers website). Next time we'll use something equally fine, but with a less delicate disposition. I will be re-buying my much loved Micron pen.
• Once finished, I sprayed our stones with a quick-drying, matt lacquer so that they can be placed outside. We bought ours from our local art shop - it was called 'GOLD acrylic professional spray paint' made by Montana.Cans (The name is deceptive as it's not actually gold, it's completely clear). 

My children have asked me to pin these rocks to Pinterest, as they really want their own to join the ones there that they've spent so much time admiring...so if you follow me you may see some rocks appearing later. 

Florence x