Mary Poppins inspired painted rock

Next month sees the release of Mary Poppins Returns, based on the book series by P. L. Travers and a sequel to 1964’s Mary Poppins. I grew up reading the books and loved watching this film so am really excited to see it. The first film was set in 1910 and Mary Poppins Returns is set in 1935 London, 25 years after the events of the original film. In the new film, Poppins, the former nanny of Jane and Michael Banks, returns after a family tragedy.

I’m really hoping we will get the chance to see the new film during the Christmas holidays. In preparation we recently watched Mary Poppins which did feel a little dated. My children thought it was very quirky so I can’t wait to see what they think of the sequel. Hopefully it will have some of the magic of the original film, with some amazing tricks up its sleeves too.

Now to celebrate all things Mary Poppins I thought it would be fun to try a few Mary Poppins inspired crafts with the children.

We’ve decorated a lot of painted rocks. They are so much fun to make and hide. To make our Mary Poppins inspired rocks we used the following:

Bag of smooth pebbles or rocks (we like these – Amazon affiliate link)

8 pack of Uni Posca paint pens with Ultra fine 1mm nib (we like these – Amazon affiliate link)

Yellow acrylic paint (we like this – Amazon affiliate link)

Spray varnish to seal the painted rocks (we use this– Amazon affiliate link)

How to make a Mary Poppins-inspired painted rock

There are so many wonderful images or phrases to decorate a rock with. We did have a hard time deciding what to make but I recently picked up a cute lip balm based on the tape measure Mary Poppins uses to get the measure of Jane and Michael. I knew I wanted to recreate it!

First I washed and dried a smooth pebble. We have it two coats of yellow acrylic paint to make sure it was completely covered.

Then we used our Ultra fine Posca paint pen in black to add the words “Practically Perfect in Every Way” alongside a small scale.

We left the ink to dry before giving it two coats of varnish.

I’m really pleased with how it turned out. We added our local # on the back so we can hide it on our next trip to the library. I hope it gets found soon!