What I Made Wednesday {Halloween Framed Rock Art}

I was mowing the lawn, my mind wandering with random thoughts just floating around in my head. One of my thoughts turned to all the creative crafters in the blogosphere and how they never cease to amaze me with their unending ideas. I am in awe every day. I was trying to figure out how those amazing bloggers are able to store all the items they create week after week after week. I was quite perplexed because I personally could not afford the space to be that creative each week. I would certainly run out of room after the first couple of months. CRACK. WHOOSH. I was startled from my thoughts when I realized I must have mowed over a rock in the grass and sent it flying through the air like a jetted rocket missile. Annoyed by the event, sure the rock dulled my trim blades, my two random thoughts merged into one - EUREKA - today's project was conceived.

I decided to create a project that was multi-seasonal (ah! helping with the storage issue) and wanted to use rocks gathered from our nearby river and create what you see here. The project is simple, fun, and so uber cute when done.

Angry Bird in background not necessary for project.

What You'll Need
picture frame
flat rocks
flat super magnets
paint of choice
paintbrushes
pencil with flat-top eraser
newspaper for surface cover
magnetic spray paint (optional)
chalkboard spray paint
polyurethane clear satin gloss spray paint
super glue
chalk

The mat on this frame is getting thrown out any way so I bought this frame, not caring it is for PROM 2011 (been awhile since my prom) at 90% off - $1.98 PLUS 30% off (I had the golden ticket)!!

What You'll Do
The funnest part of this whole project was when my son and I went rock hunting. He's such a natural.

The Rock Hunter

Clean and dry the rocks. Pick your rocks for each letter of your word or phrase.

Paint your rocks.

I used the end of a pencil eraser to make perfect polka-dots.

Use strong glue to adhere magnets to back of rocks.

Glue magnet to the highest surface on the back of the rock.

Spray to seal. It helps the color pop!

Take the frame and glass only to spray with magnetic spray paint. Wait to dry and apply twice more.

Spray the glass and frame with chalkboard paint. Allow to dry and apply again.

Prep the glass chalkboard by covering with chalk sweeps, then wipe with a paper towel.

Your experience may be different but the magnetic paint did diddly squat to hold my rocks to the glass. My solution: my obnoxiously powerful magnets held up the rocks by sandwiching the glass between the rock's magnet and another magnet on the back. See the picture? The rock is on the left, the additional magnet is on the right, and both magnets are sandwiching the glass.

Keeping with the Halloween theme, I took an orange chalk and colored the frame edge.

What You'll Need to Know to Finish
Put the frame all back together again. I placed the little ghost on the edge of the frame using the same sandwiching method with the magnets. I love the 3-dimensional effect. My son added candy corn chalk drawings around the rocks as an added touch. Voila!

So do you get it? Multi-seasonal! When Halloween is done I'll remove these rocks, wipe down the chalkboard, and paint new rocks for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, you get the idea. Talk about space saver!!!! Do you like it? This was so much fun to do, but I liked the rock hunting with my kiddo the best.

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