Sylvanian Families painted rocks

My children are both going through a Sylvanian Families stage at the moment. It’s not hard to see why, the toys are super cute and perfect for open-ended play. Following our trip to the Sylvanian Families Shop in London a few weeks ago I have been on the look out for simple Sylvanian Families crafts we can do at home. As they also like decorating rocks we came up with our very own Sylvanian Families painted rocks!

Equipment to make Sylvanian Families painted rocks

smooth stones (we bought ours from the local garden centre)

Chalkola Chalk Paint pens

Black permanent pen

Pinty Plus Gloss Varnish

How to make Sylvanian Families painted rocks

First we drew the pictures we wanted onto each stone. We used a Sylvanian Families stencil to draw each outline nad made a teddy bear and rabbit.

We went round each outline in black permanent pen.

Then coloured them in using Chalkola Chalk Paint pens.

The stones were quite porous so needed a couple of coats of paint. The Chalkola pens are really good for this kind of project but I had to keep reminding my kids to let each colour dry before using another one. Otherwise the colours run a little and make the nibs of the pens dirty – my pet hate!

When we had finished we wrote our local hashtag on the reverse, along with “take a pic and hide again”. Hiding painted rocks is so popular where we live and we love to see our rocks being found again and again.

As we wanted the pictures to survive for as long as possible I sealed each one with a quick spray of Pinty Plus Art & Craft Gloss Varnish. You can buy Pinty Plus products through Novasol, their UK distributor.

This gave the rocks a nice shine and will hopefully help keep the pictures intact in the autumnal weather. If you didn’t want to make these to hide then they would also make great paperweights or handmade gifts.