My Backyard: We Made a Concrete Lily Pad and Frog

With a little time off from work and some rainy day boredom we once again attempt a cement DIY project.

We still have all kinds of odds and ends of concrete mix and masonry that we picked up for free several months back at one of the big home improvement stores. Here's the sneak peak of the finale.

Well, this stuff has been sitting in my garden shed for some time now and the place is far from waterproof. The first partial bag was all chunks and pieces. Mike worked hard to get this slightly usable. We ended up just throwing it into this old plastic planter and starting with a fresher bag. No problem, we'll use this somewhere.

Just like before we decided to do it with a depression sand mold. (It looks like black dirt but it's just really dirty sand.) And since it was a rainy day we just threw down an old shower curtain in my garden shed.

Next, like before, I wanted to use plant leaves to make a pattern in the mold. I picked up some sea grape leaves and cut them to kind of resemble lily pads.

Here they are cut and placed into a giant lily looking mold.

Mike managed to mix a good batch of cement, poured it in and smoothed it out.

Next up is the frog. This is an old lighted electrical frog. We used masonry mix for this and it was a lot of fun (read challenge) to get this to stick to the frame.

But I think we got it done although it's going to be very brittle.

There's a bit leftover so I plopped a bunch into this shell shaped plate and also attempted to make a lily flower. My lack of artistic skills ended up making a sort of sun figure instead. lol

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Que the "Jeopardy" music while all this dries overnight.

I'm looking out my window and I see this sliver of the moon and Venus really bright in the sky.

I'm just outside the front door and I'm being eaten alive by mosquitos but on a lark I focus on Venus.

And out of nowhere it just POPS into my viewfinder big and round. I'm clicking like hell... clicking and scratching and clicking and scratching...

Venus - Swoosh!

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And we're back!

Everything slipped out of their mold like a dream. The frog seems pretty solid, too.

Time for some paint!!

I also had this Flamingo bird house thing that had been sun bleached to death. So I painted it, too.

We chose were to place it and used a fat piece of PVC to set it up on. There was this moment that we looked at it and thought it looked more like a toadstool than a lily pad. (Next project, I guess. lol)

Here's Mike working a coat of bright blue paint on the lily pad.