Room for creativity: amuse yourself painting imaginative stones

Among the nicest and most satisfying creative jobs that can be done at any age is painting stones: with a pinch of imagination and the right inspiration, in fact, any pebble or rock with a fairly smooth surface can be considered a blank canvas to be painted with images of all kinds. Better still, when you take advantage of the shape of the stone itself to make it look like something completely different by using just a little color.

A little acrylic paint and some brushes, perhaps markers or pencils, are enough to make a drawing, and at any age you can indulge yourself by painting stones in a thousand different ways. Once colored, you can use them to decorate the house with panache or even use them as convenient paperweights!

If the stones are riangular in shape, they can become beautiful strawberries ... you almost want to eat these!

The larger ones, with a slightly round shape, are perfect to transform into cacti, painting on the thorns and flowers of one of the more than thousand species which exist.

A little white paint for the background, then cracks drawn on using a felt-tip marker. The space in the center can then be decorated with other colors: here is a chick peeking out of the cracked egg 

Shades of color that resemble the sky at different times of the day, and then a brush used to trace the silhouettes of the trees on a skyline: each stone is a miniature painting.

When you find the one of the right shape stone, you can decorate it like an avocado, complete with it's own stone in the center!

Gnomes are another type of design suitable for stones, as the hat can have different shapes that can be adapted to whatever shape the stone has.

Do you want to pretend that a tree trunk is inhabited by fairies? You could create the door for their house among the roots just by painting it on a stone and then laying it among the twigs and moss.

Have you ever thought about painting cartoon ice cream cones that look like they come out of a comic strip?

Or painting many colorful fish! For these it will be better to use flat stones, such as those that are used to throw and skip upon the water.

Be careful not to bite into these M & Ms!

Another easy and fun idea: penguins!

How would you like to decorate stones?