Ladybug rocks for your garden

Ladybug rocks for your garden?

Who doesn’t need a herd of ladybugs in their garden.  If you ask any child, they will tell you, We ALL need a herd somewhere in our yard.

This is how you go about collecting a herd of ladybug rocks.  You first start off with a trip to the beach, riverbed, backyard rock pile, which ever of those meets your needs.  I like the beach best, just because it makes the children more ready for a nap after lunch.  I try and help them choose rocks that are smooth and bug shaped.  They sometimes have different ideas about what that looks like, but we just go for it.

Then we paint our rocks with a base coat of sealer paint to make the colored paint stick better and last longer when out in the yard.  Next we pick a color for our ladybugs.

One child chose red and the other thought green bugs would be nice.  Who can tell what they will want… Just go with it.

Next, I take a sharpie for the smaller children and draw in the face lines and back body marks so they can just fill it in with black paint.  They both did a really good job at this. I was kind of surprised how well that worked.

Then to make the dots, I look around for something to stamp with.  We used the bottom of a small squeeze bottle for the large dots and the end of a paint brush for the smaller ones.  You just make a small puddle, or the inside of the lid works good to stamp your paint from.  They dip the end of the brush into the paint in the lid, then stamp it onto the ladybug where they want the spots.  It works really well this way and makes nice round dots.  We do the same for the whites of the eyes.  You have to let them dry before you add the black spots for the pupils.  Then you a have ladybug rocks.

These were the ones I did for my garden.

And here is the whole herd of ladybug rocks for your garden.  They are making their way out to a spot in the yard flower garden, just stopping of the porch for a photo shoot.  I hope you and your children enjoy making a herd.  I would love to see a picture.  Have a great Summer.  Granny