The Art of Stone Painting

1. Introduction: [NOISE] Hello and welcome to my studio. My name is [inaudible] and I live in British Columbia. I'm a graphic designer [NOISE] and an artist. This is where I come to walk every day, take my daily walks and I pick up like a whole bunch of rocks. I come back privily from my walks about five times every day. Then when I left. I also come here to release my stone [NOISE] and leave them on the beach for other people to find. I call it my touch and release program but it's also as [NOISE] form or part of abandonment. A stone is really like a mini Canvas. It's really small, it's not very intimidating, but you can also create beautiful archive. In this class, I want to show you how to make beautiful art on stones and I'm going to show you everything you need to now to get started [NOISE]. First I'm going to walk you through my favorite material to paint on stones and then where to look for inspiration, and also showing you a way to create your own beeswax salve that you can rub on your stones. Now we'll start painting. We'll start with lines and grids. I will go into all over patterns. Then I'll show you how to paint some leaves and other botanical elements. Mandela types of design and then maybe even your own alphabet. Then how to seal your stones and maybe a few other ways that you can use them. [MUSIC] Please join me in this wonderful world of painting stones. I'll meet you in my inside studio because [inaudible] [NOISE]. See you in class. 2. Materials: [NOISE] The first thing you're going to need is some stones to paint on. I like a variety of size and colors and textures. I'm pretty lucky that I live right by a beach that has the best stones. Actually, it's too many to choose from. [MUSIC] But if don't have access to that, you can find them online. I know that Artistro sells a pack of 10 rocks or 30 or 60, and you can have those shipped to you and use to paint on. This is your little canvas. [NOISE] The next thing you'll need is your paint pen. I use the Artistro paint markers. For this lesson, they do a whole bunch of different kinds, but what I'm going to use is the extra-fine point. I'm going to use the medium, this one here, the medium point and also the fine point. I'm going to basically use those three. Mostly in white, I'm going to use a little bit of color. I would say if you're only going to buy one size, buy the extra-fine point because this is really the one that I use for everything. Then I would buy a pack of five because you're going to use them. You can use them with abandon which is great. You can also buy the whole set of 12, and then you'll have all these great colors that you can experiment with. These are really great. You can have fun with it and you can paint on a lot more than just stones. You can paint on glass, on ceramic, on porcelain, on wood, on rubber, on metal, on paper, on fabric. Anyway, you can just experiment and have fun with them. I also use the medium tip and the fine tip. These also come as a set. I think you can buy them separately just of white. But this is the set of medium-fine tips. Again, you have all these great colors to have fun with, and this is the set of medium tip. These also come in a set. This is a 30 set. But you can get a smaller set if you want. But look at all these great colors. Is that awesome? So yeah, you'll definitely want to play around with these. I would recommend buying a nice set of colors. I'm not really going to use in this class that much, but you're going to want to use them for other things. I do have a coupon, a discount code for Artistro paint pen or anything on their website. You can order these through Amazon or through the Artistro website, and you can use the discount code LUCIE10 on artistro.com to get 10 percent off. I'm going to show you now how to prime these. I'll show you may be using a color. Let's use maybe this color here. I'll show you what you do when you get started, to get started with these. First, you take your marker and then you shake it just to want to make sure that all the paint is mixed up. You have to hear that little ball inside telling you that it's actually mixing up the color. Then you do that with a cap on and then after that, you start to prime your tip. You just push until you see the paint coming out. Don't despair. See, you can see it's coming now. [NOISE] Slowly coming down. Now I have enough. I have the ink and I'm ready to go. [NOISE] It works great on paper too. In addition to the stone and the Artistro paint pen, you're going to need a pencil and an eraser. You'll need a paper towel or a soft cloth. This is optional, but if you want to protect your stone, you can use matte medium and a brush. I like the Liquitex fluid. If you want to make a beeswax salve and I have the recipe here and I have a video explaining how to make it. Instead of the matte medium, you can use that, and you'll need some beeswax and some coconut oil. Then I also have something you can download, I call it my stone practice sheet. This is a sheet where you can make your design before you put it on the stone, and you can just print a whole bunch of these and then just play around. This is a page that you can just use to practice your design and doodle. Before you put it on your stone, you can actually just do it on this practice sheet and then you transfer it to your stone, and then you can also use a practice stone. I do that if I have like a stone that is not perfect or I'll just sacrifice one to just practice things. I might turn out to be a masterpiece and it's not a practice stone anymore. [LAUGHTER] You never know. [LAUGHTER] You can download these. The last thing you can download is the alphabet sheet with all the letters and we're going to have a whole lesson on how to write letters on your stones. So I think that's about it, that covers it, and we're ready to get going. 3. Inspiration: Where to get inspiration for your little stone? I would say, first thing you should do is go out and bring a sketchbook and draw as much as you can. Anything that you see on your walks or anything, just sketch some things and fill pages and pages of your sketchbook. Then when you come, it's time to paint your rock, then you have ideas. There's so many ways that you can stylize a leaf or there's just a lot of ways that you can experiment with shapes. Another good place to get inspiration for texture is to look into stitching books. This is Sashiko embroidery techniques and this is great. These are nice repeating patterns that would all look really great on a stone if you reproduce them. Then, the other great source is embroidery books. Embroidery books are great because they're all line art. These would be really great to translate into a pattern onto your stones. There's one I really like here, I'm going to show you, this one here. I love all the little details, the little texture. Just ideas for textures and line work and everything, these are great source for that. Also, influence from different countries. There's so many resources out there, it's really hard to narrow it down, but I would say just explore, go to the library, get some books for inspiration. Always bring your sketchbook with you and then just draw and see what you're attracted to and just draw as many shapes as you can, and then you'll have a book full of great ideas to do some fabulous stones. 4. Preparing your Stones: The other thing I'm going to show you how to make is how to make your own beeswax salve to put on top of your stone. You can also use, instead of that, you can use matte medium. A lot of people ask me if what I put to protect my stone because you want to leave it outside and in the rain and you want it to last. I'm going to show you how you can make your own beeswax salve with beeswax and coconut oil. If my stone is rough, enough to texture is a little rougher, I'm going to apply the little salve before I even start painting on it. Most of the time, I don't put anything before I paint on it. But I'm going to show you at the difference. I'm just going to apply this and I'm going to wipe off the excess. It's really fun, though, because it's like a little massage , [LAUGHTER] stone massage. You can also wish for something while you rub your stone, you wish for anything you want really. Sky is the limit. What I do is I usually always wipe off the excess and then I will leave it, I will let it dry. I would let it sit for a while before I start painting over it. But I'll do a demo with this one that I did a while ago. Because if you paint straight on, let's say unfinished stone, this one, I don't think I did anything to it. You're not going to see a difference honestly. This one doesn't have any finish on it. It's straight rock. This one here as I put the beeswax salve over it. It only makes a big difference if your stone has a rough surface and it makes it easier to glide. You see what I mean? It's a little bit easier. I didn't let this dry long enough so the paint might peel off. I would wait. But this could be helpful for that. But most of the time, I actually do not put anything on my rocks. I just go straight on it and I add the salve afterward. I'm going to show you at the end. If you're going to use matte medium, that's really easy. You just take your matte medium and you paint over it and you let it dry. This one, I did it on top because I want to show you how you can put, you can finish off and seal it, but you can still add something to it. Like this one, I've decided that I want to add something. I felt like I needed more. I don't know if it does. It's nice because you can add to it, not put another coat of matte medium on top. If you already have a layer of matte medium and you make a mistake here, you can pretty much wipe it off. As if you don't have any coating and you're painting on your rock, you won't be able to do that. It might be a way to just, at first when you start doing it, you have a second chance to maybe change your mind and wipe it off or you let it dry. But if you're going to use matte medium underneath, you make sure to put matte medium on top because, otherwise, it's not going to last as long. That's for the coating. In this video, I'm going to show you how I make my special beeswax salve. For that, I use coconut oil. This one does not have a scent, doesn't matter, if you'd like to smell a coconut, you can use the scented one. The proportion are one portion of beeswax to three portion of coconut oil. I am going to do roughly about a teaspoon of beeswax, put it in there. It's not super accurate, but I think it really needs to be really. I'm going to do about three teaspoon of coconut oil, about. [NOISE] This is the mix that I'm doing. [NOISE] You can melt it two different ways. I have this little Mr. Coffee mug warmer that I use, and what I do is I just put it on and I wait until it's melted. It's going to take a while. But if you're not in a hurry, that's a really easy way to do it. The other way you can do is just put it in the microwave and I'm going to go do that right now and be right back. For this quantity, I put it in the microwave for about two minutes, and then it's completely melted. What I'm going to do in there, you don't have to, but if you want to add some essential oil, I'm going to add some lavender essential oil in there because I like the smell of it. Just a few drops. I'm going to shake it and stir it. [LAUGHTER] Stir it and not shaking. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to pour it and this is what I use because I think it works really well to use. It's an old tealight container and when I'm done with it, I recycle it and I use that too as a container. This is a little hot. I'm just going to pour it in here, all the way to the top, and then you're going to let this sit for, I would let it cure overnight, but you probably use it right away as soon as it solidifies. it's going to look like that. It's going to be ready to use. The other thing you can do is use a little. If you have an empty container for a lip balm, this one, it was empty and I just filled it up. Like I have a little bit leftover in here. I could probably just fill up another one and use it as lip balm. It's great. You can also use it that on your stone because it's a good way to just rub it on and then it's very portable. [LAUGHTER] You can take it to the beach and rub your stones. It's great on your lips also. It's also great on your hands and it's wonderful. It feels really great. Because sometimes you find some really nice stones, you don't want to really paint on them. You find them, they're wet, and they're beautiful, and then you get them home, the next day and they don't look that great because you can't see the color as well when they dry. I have a lot of stones that I'd just like to keep around my house. All I do is I apply the salve on it. I just rub it on and it's so pretty and it's so fun to do. Then I wipe it off with a paper towel. You can also use a soft cloth if that you want, something absorbent. But you could see how pretty the color is on this one. Let's try another one here. I use my fingernails because I think I can just scrape a little bit of it like that. Let's try this one here. I just love it. This one looks almost like a muscle. It gets to the point where you have enough on your fingers and you can just grab a stone and just like do that. See how pretty this is. [MUSIC] You can use that on a wood also. It really works well to rub over any wooden bowl or anything that needs a little refreshing. Look at that. How pretty it is. Look at that. Very simple and it nourishes the wood and makes it look like new again. [NOISE] I'm going to put my little stones in there. Oh my God. So pretty, like little jewels. 5. Lines and Grids: [NOISE] Okay. We're going to start with just lines and grids because they are the easiest ones to do, and they still look really great if we put them together. If you look at it, all these designs are super simple. But at the same time, if you put a bunch of them together, they look great. We're going to start with very basic lines. Let's see. Maybe I can show you like if you just do little dotted line, like little stitch lines, if they do them on different types of rocks, they're going to look different. These are all kind of the same patterns. If you look at them, they all look different. You can also do the just simple straight lines like that. If you just don't do it over the whole rock, it looks like something's wrapped around it, so it's really cool. Let's just start with that. Move that away, and I want to have some rocks here. I'm just going to do a little wrap around like that and some little stitch lines on these. For this, I'm going to use the extra fine point. If you want to practice, I have this practice sheet that you can use. If you're not sure, you could just practice on this sheet and see what it would look like. If you have an idea for a design, maybe you could just do it before you do it on the rock because then it might be easier if you start on something, just do a little sketch on this. If you want to, you could fill this whole sheet for ideas and then transfer them to your stone. I usually just go in and do whatever I feel like doing because for me it's more of a meditative process. I'll just take a stone and just decide what I want to do. This one, I think I'm going to go tall on this one instead of going like a little belt. [LAUGHTER] Instead of belt-like, it's going to be freeway-like. I don't know. I'm just coming up with words here. I'm just going to leave this one like that. Then I'm going to do another one where it's just going to be lines. Maybe I'm going to do some straight lines and then I'm going to make them cross. They don't have to be straight at all, and then I could just leave it like this or I can add some little dots, like I can use maybe the medium point. A lot of time, I just test it here first to make sure that it's loaded properly. Then I'm just going to add some little dots. Most of the time I really don't know what I'm going to do. I just start doodling. I just doodle on rocks. You know what? If you don't like it, it's just a rock. Just take another rock and start again, and then go and put it out there on the beach for somebody to find with a nice little message on the back. [LAUGHTER] So have this one. We just did those two, see how quick it was. Then I'm going to do another one. Maybe just like some dotted line or you can do a squiggly line. I like to do this little grid kind of thing. So maybe I'll do this one with a little grid. Actually, when I do my lines, I prefer to use the extra fine point. So that's what we're going to do here. Let me take this little guy here. Sometimes, too, when you start to paint a stone, you have an idea in mind and then, for some reason, it doesn't work out the way that you think was going to work out, but it turns into something else and that might be even more interesting. So don't be too set in a special design. This one I'm just going to add my little line across, create a little grid like that, and this is a great one. I want to show you what we did. We have these three stones, and then we're going to do one more. I think I like to do, I like this little grid here. So I'm going to do it on this one. This is very easy. You just put lines across. [MUSIC] Now we have these four. Let's do another one. Let's do a bigger one here. I think this one I'm just going to do lines with the medium. I'm just going to do some lines like this. I'm just going to go across and keep it really simple. Usually, I start right in the middle and then I usually prime it first, then I'm just going to go and do my little line. You can draw it first if you want with a pencil, but I usually just go straight on the rocks here. If it doesn't look like I wanted to look again, I'm going to turn it into something else. We have this one and this nice little group already. I really like to do a series of little lines, too. So let's do one more like that. I'm going to do this one. I also look at the shape of the stone and it tells me what it wants to be. Let's do some little dots. You see, we just created this little group here and they look great. I would encourage you to explore and try to do maybe some zigzag lines like that, or use some lines and add some circles, or just do a crisscross and add some little dots and lines. You can also do more of an X shape. Anyway, sky is the limit. So go ahead and experiment a little bit with these, and then we'll go to the next pattern. 6. Allover Patterns: [NOISE] Okay. Now we're going to work on all-over patterns. An all-over pattern is a repeated pattern that you have that covers your whole rock. Here you have a little bit of a flower pattern and these little dark patterns. Anyway, I'm going to show you how to make some of these. Let's go and create a flower, a star, maybe something with dots and then something that's a mix of line and all over pattern here. Let's move these here. Let's start with the really easy one. This one here, the little star pattern. Very easy. You start and you just create the star. Easy. Then at the end I just put a little dot because it makes it look a little bit retro and it adds a little interest. Then I'll just repeat this all over my rock. [NOISE] I have this little star pattern and an all-over pattern. It's very simple, but it looks great. I think it looks great. Then let's try to do a little flower pattern. I'm going to use this stone and the same principle. You just create a little flower, whichever type of flower that you like to do. You can do something that's more with little lines like this one, for example. You could create a flower like that [NOISE] or you could just do little circles and then you can fill those with something. There's a lot of ways that you can do an all-over pattern. But what I would do is just pick a type of flower that you like to draw and just repeat it over and over. See, very simple and awesome. Now we're going to do something more like a pattern. I'm going to take an element, let's say a shape, and then I'm going to repeat that shape but I'm going to make it overlap each other. Now you have this cool stone and what you can do is you can add some elements like that. Maybe I want to add some little lines here. Maybe I'm going to add some little dot here. You can just play around with it. You can put the little star if you want, mix it up. That's another all-over pattern. This one is very easy. What you do is I'm going to use for this one the medium point and you're basically doing a flower, but just with dots. See. I'm going to repeat that over and over. I'm putting a dot and then just putting stuff, dot around the dots. See, you have this all-over pattern. Oops, see that wasn't dry here. If you feel like you want to add to it, you can just do that. You can turn it into something else if you want or just do a few of them like that. You can play around with it. Now I'm going to show you how I'm going to do this pattern here, which is a line pattern and grids, but at the same time it's more of an all-over pattern. I divided my stone in squares and now I'm going to do my lines across. [MUSIC] It's all different, but I can see how you can create this really cool little all-over pattern with a design like that, starting with a grid. We have our little collection here. Again, very simple, but they look really good together. 7. Botanical Elements: [NOISE] Another one of my favorite thing to do is to paint botanical elements on the rocks. I love painting leaves or little trees, and usually imaginary leaves, stylized. Usually, I like to use more the oblong type of shape in my rocks, but you can use any shape that you want, any shape that you have on hand. I'm going to start with just making something, maybe like this one here. Let's just do a simple little branch. See the branch? Yeah, I guess so, although branch with leaves. I'm just going to draw some lines. I'm going to keep it really simple. [MUSIC] Then maybe when I'm done with that, I'm just going to add some little details. I'm going to add maybe some little dots just at the end of my leaves just to add a little interest. Very simple, but very elegant and pretty. Let's do just a simple little leaf like this. If you do one leaf, I usually start with just my line here. Then there's my shape. You can do that whichever way you want. I will add some little dots here. There's my leaf, and then I'm going to do more like a tree like this. Then I'm going to come in with this and add some dots. [MUSIC] Now we have a little tree, and then let's do a leaf like that. [MUSIC] One more. Let's do some funky little branch like this. [MUSIC] That gives me a nice, little assortment of botanical elements to mix up with my other stones. [MUSIC] [NOISE] 8. Mandala Style Designs: [MUSIC] Now I'm going to show you how to make a Mandala type of design or just a circular design. For this I'm going to probably use another color, but just one more color to the idol dimension. I don't make a multicolored like a lot of people do Mandalas, but you can definitely do that and go that route if you want to but I'm going to show you just a simple way to do this type of design. Let's start with the one that looks like a sea urchin; one of those two here, and then I'm going to grab my stone. Because you're going to work in a circular way for this, I like to tape it on a piece of cardboard. I'm going to use some tape [NOISE]. I can use any kind of masking tape and then I'm just going to stick it on here, and then I'm going to do my lines. I'm going to just draw my lines and do some star here in half and then in half, and then you have a place to start. What I'm going to do now is start in the middle. Let's see I'm going to start here, and maybe I'll start with [NOISE] the find point. Again, you frame it. I'm going to do it here [MUSIC], and then I'm going to go around maybe with the other color. Let's do that, I'm going to start with this one and then I'm going to go. I'll have that. Now I'm going to do some lines all the way to the end. I'm going to use my fine point and I'm going to add some circles. Ready. Now I'm going to do one that's more like this one, like a Mandala type. This cube is just over here. [MUSIC] Let me show you how to make these little snowflakes [MUSIC]. 9. Create an Alphabet: [NOISE] In this lesson I'm going to show you how to create your own little alphabet. I created this sheet for you that you can use just for inspiration and for size, but you can also create your own, find one online and print it, and just make it your own. But this is a good place to start. I have all the letters here. Of course when you want to write something, you're going to have to create more letters. I always have some extra that I create. Then I'm going to show you my process on how I transfer the letters. I wanted to be about the same size, all of them. These are about an inch tall. I leave it lose because I mean, so rock, you don't want it to be perfect. You want it to look a little funky, but at the same time you want it to be easy to read when you're trying to spell some words. I'm going to use this stone here. [NOISE]. Let's see. I want to do maybe a D. I'm going to do a D for dewclaw. [LAUGHTER]. First thing I'm going to do is these are about an inch tall, these letters. For a reference, with a pencil, I'm going to mark the inch mark here and try to center it on my stone here. Then I'll just draw. I'll going to start with [NOISE] the flat part here. [NOISE] Let's see. Then you can erase those lines afterwards so don't worry too much. Don't worry too much if it's not centered or if it looks a little bit funky, that's the whole idea. If you want to perfect alphabet, you would just print something. The whole idea of doing it on the rocks and it has to look home made and fine. I have my basic letter here. I have this page here as a PDF to download for you to use. I'm just going to go ahead and just draw my lines right over my pencil lines. Then I'm going to do this curve here. The curves are little bit harder to do. It's hard to do because the stone is also curved. Even if you're trying to make it perfect, it's not going to be perfect, so you just have to let go of that. Now I have my shape and what I like to do to personalize these, I'm going to add some little lines in here. For the final touch, I'm just going to put a roll of little dots here. You can put them inside here, or outside. I think I'm just going to put outside here. Do whatever you want. You can put any flourish. There you go. You have the letter D as in dewclaw. [LAUGHTER] Do that 26 times and you have your alphabet. [LAUGHTER] That easy. Then when this is dry, wait until it dry, but then you can just use an eraser and erase your lines. I can go on and show you, like this one here. I think I erased the line on this one here. [MUSIC] Sometimes you'll get a little bit of the pen marks on there that was going to go overlay your white so you can always go in and redraw your lines if you want to or not, because it's really pretty either way. [MUSIC]. 10. Bonus Video: Cherry Blossoms: In this bonus video, I'm going to show you how to paint a little cherry blossoms and also a little bird here. This is very simple, you just need your stones again. I'm going to pick three stones, like one more elongated shape. I'll do this one here for the little bird one. This one is going to go horizontally. For this one here, what I did is I used a stone that already had a line in it, and I work with that detail. I think I'm going to do that again. I'm going to use the stone here. Already has some lines in it. I'm going to work my branches with the design that's already there. Let's start with this one here. For this one I'm going to use the medium point and I also will use my extra fine point in white. What I'm going to start with is I'm just going start with my branches first. Let's shake it up a little bit. I'm going to start here at the bottom and just draw some branches. Sometimes it's easier to do it upside down like that. You can go and if you want to go and have them cross, you could do that too. These are my stems here, I'm going to add some little branches because I'm going to put my little flowers at the top here. Another one here. I think we'll start with that. Now we're going to go in with my pink. Then I'm going to add my flowers. To do these flowers is very easy, I just do five little dots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Then I'm going to do the same thing. At the end of each little stem here, I'm going to do a flower. I tried to keep them really close together and then I look here and I feel like I need to have one a little bit lower here. I'm going to draw one more stem just right here to overlap there and add a flower in here. The next thing I'm going to add is little buds. I'm going to add just a little bit here and there. Because these are little flower buds, not too many. While the other one dries, I'm going to work on my blue one. This one I want to work with what's already there on the stone. I'm going start with my white extra fine again. I'm going to draw a line over this. That will be one of my stem is going to make them work with the design that's already there. Then what I'll do is do the same thing, and I use my light blue medium point and just draw my little flowers again. Five dots. Sometimes, like for this one, I think instead of doing a flower, I'm going do 1, 2, 3 dots like that, just to finish off like that. Then add some flowers. You could do a mix of both. I'm going to let this dry and then I'm going to work on my third stone, which is going to be the horizontal branches with the little bird. I'm going to start with this one. I'm going to just draw, let's say this is going to be my branch where my little bird is going to be. Then maybe I'll draw my bird first. What I'm going do is just draw a little bird shape. Very simple, a little beak, and then three feathers. Then I'm going to just do my branch like I did for the other ones. Put the legs here, another one here. Then the difference between this one is they're not all going to come from here. It's like the bird is in a tree, so I'm just going to have some branches that come from the other side here. Then I'm going to have another one coming from here. Then I'm going to add my little flowers. 2, 3, 4, 5. The last thing I'm going to add is some color inside my little bird here. I'm just going to fill in my little bird with blue. We're going to let everything dry, and then we're going to come in and add some more details with white. Now that everything is pretty dry, I'm going to add some little detail with my extra fine point. Let's start with the first one that we did and add little dots in the middle, 1, 2, 3. I'm going to do that everywhere. The other thing I like to do is add a little bit of shadow or highlight on my little buds here. I mean you can read that as a little shadow, a little highlight, or even it looks like a little bit of snow. You can decide to put it below if you want at the top, I like to put it at the top here, almost like the sun is hitting on it. Then the last thing that I like to do is add some little dots. They can be like a little branch. They could be following the branch here, I can put it right next to it, add a little detail. It just adds a little je ne sais quoi. [LAUGHTER] You'll see. Until you feel like you have it exact like the way that you want it. I think I'm going to stop right there and move on to the next one, which is our little designer we did with the line in the rock. The last one that I'm doing is my little bird. For the detail on the bird, I'm just going to do this little line. It's not dry. [LAUGHTER] It's not super dry yet. Let's see. I'm just going to add these little line that's going to look like little feathers. You can add some here if you want. I'm just going to do little dots here. [MUSIC] For the eye, I'll probably just use my black marker, and just do like one little dot, just like that. See, we have a nice little bird. It's so easy. Then I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to add my little dots and highlights, and voila you have three nice little cherry blossom stones and the little bird. 11. Finishing Touches: Now we have all my stones that I made in the different categories. Then I'm going to decide if I'm going to leave them natural or if I'm going to add some South to the beeswax soft to protect them. Or if I'm going to seal them with matte medium. Depending on what you're doing with it, let's say you're going to have it outside a lot and you really want to protect it, maybe you want to use the matte medium and I'm going to show you how to do that. Let's say this one here I'm going to do the South. You have to let it dry, make sure that the ink is completely dry. The paint pen is completely dry before you can actually apply the South on it. It'll give you a little bit of a darker look. This one is sealed. This one I can decide that I don't want to seal it, because I want to keep it. All my other stone with alphabet on it don't have any sealant. I'm leaving it natural because I know I'm not going to use it outside. I'm going to use it in my studio. So it doesn't really matter. I'm just going to erase the lines and I'm done. For this one here, let's say this one here I want to put in my garden. I'm going to seal that one with matte medium. I'm going to show you it looks like. I'm going to erase some of the lines, but I'm not going to worry too much about it. I'm just going to use a cheap brush and some matte medium. Then easily I'll just put it right on it. [LAUGHTER] Because I'm lazy. I'm going to put a piece of paper here. I've put a little too much. What I'm going to do, I'm going to wipe it off. Then I'm going to leave that this dry. You can do the back or not. If there's nothing on the surface, you don't need to do it. This is just to protect your linework, and this will take a little while to dry. I'm going to leave it here. Then I have these two here that I'm probably just going to add a little bit of South. The nice thing about the matte medium is that once this is dry, you can go back on top and add some lines too. This one I have enough on my finger. There you have it. This is without. These are your options. 12. More ideas!: [NOISE] What else can you do with these beautiful stones? Well, you could turn them into garden stones and write the name of all your herbs and plants that you have in your garden, and then decorate them with a little border and place them in your garden. The other thing you can do is use them as place cards for your dinner parties or weddings or special occasions. I had even turned my stones into business cards with my website on the back, and they make great people with. You can also make yourself a little tic-tac-toe with an old plank and I use a wood-burning tool for the lines. You can paint them like Easter eggs. I like to use them as props in my collage picks tools that I post on Instagram, and sometimes they even come part of the artwork. But most of all, I like to paint a bunch of them and release them on my beach for other people to find, and I call that my catch and release program. It's a form of art abandonment. But whatever you decide to do, just get out there, get creative, experiment, and enjoy the process. 13. Au Revoir!: Thank you so much for taking my class. I hope you were inspired to create lots of mini art on pebbles, and on stones, and on rocks, and that you can share your art with the world. Even if it's just to take pictures and put on social media, or release them in the wild, or if you just want to give them to friends and family, you're going to make somebody happy, for sure. I hope to see you in another one of my class. In the mean time, [FOREIGN] [MUSIC].