Homemade Stepping Stones - A great mother's day gift

If you're looking for a great mother's day gift for mom or grandma, a homemade stepping stone is a great solution. Many stores such as A.C. Moore and Michael's sell stepping stone kits or you can easily assemble your own.

I began with a kit just because I ran across them on sale and it looked like a really cute project. After that I've just bought the materials and made my own.

In this hubs I'm just to show the project we made with a kit and the in my next hub I'll show step by step of my children making them for their grandma's for this mother's day.

A kit comes with a mold (plastic dish to hold the cement mix) a wooden stirring stick, stones or decorations (vary according to the kit). All you have to do is mix the cement with water and stir well. You then pour it into the mold and wait a little while for it to become hard enough to leave an impression. At this point you want to shake the mold back and forth so that any air bubbles come to the top of the mix. You need to smooth those out to the best finished job. My kids have done stones with handprints and footprints. Be sure to have clean water available to wash the mix off because it really dries out the skin.

If you want to write something then you need to allow the mix to dry for a while and then you use a popsicle stick to write in the cement. The kits usually include other decorations such as flat glass pieces, glitter or small stones that you can use to decorate. You simply push these into the wet cement. We've gathered our own stones from our many fishing trips and have included these in the stones.

Once your stone is decorated and looks the way you would like, it just needs to sit for a couple of days in a dry place to cure. I usually wait about a week before I remove it from the mold. I purchase cement sealer to seal the stone before I leave it outside. This protects it from the elements.

My kids are so proud of these and they love to give them as gifts. These are especially great for gardeners.