As the winter draws on and there is little to do outside in the garden and in any event it’s too cold anyway, here is a project that you can try indoors. All you need are some smooth stones, paint and your artistic flair. These ten ideas come from Melissa J Will at her Empress of Dirt website and will point you in the right direction.

Creating garden art painted rocks has never been easier now that top quality outdoor craft paints are available. Using?step-by-step instructions,?you can create wonderful animals, insects, houses, and more like the ones you see here.
I?ll show you everything?you need to get started plus a gallery of ideas including cats, owls, frogs, racoon, deer, and ladybugs.
You can make your own garden art painted rocks. Find out which paints to use and follow the step by step instructions for cats, birds, frogs, deer, ladybugs and more.
Last summer I was on a local garden tour (what?s new?) and met the wonderful artist who painted the rocks you see here and she kindly gave permission to photograph her work. While talent always helps, the good news is, there are a number of rock painting tutorial books available that will walk you through every step of the process and there?s a number of projects that a complete beginner can do (and like).
If you think about it, the biggest challenge is probably to find rocks in the right shapes. It?s probably much easier to get the rocks first and decide what you?re painting on them based on their shapes.

Read the rest at Empress of Dirt
Image source: Empress of Dirt