My Lack of Artistic Talent

It's coming upon Mother's Day and I want to tell the special mothers in my life how much the kids and I love and appreciate them.  That extends outside of Moms and Grandmoms to Aunts and other great woman in our life.  So, in order to really make things meaningful, it takes a lot more time, effort, and money.

I come up with this crazy idea to make stepping stones with the kids hand prints and let them decorate them.  I purchased the plaster and stencils and paint and other assorted decorating tools.

Let me tell you, this is not quite as easy as it sounds.

First,  the plaster had horrible instructions.  Mix one pound of powered plaster to 1 and 3/4 cups of water.  Now,  I don't know about you,  but I don't have a scale in my house that weighs powder.  I just mixed it until it was "pancake consistency" per the box.  The box also said that you have 30 minutes to work with the plaster before it dries....ummm....untrue.  This plaster was dry in the bowl I was mixing it in in 3 minutes or less!
FAILED

So, then, I thought...let me make less of it at one time.  So, I made a small bowl of it.  I poured it into the mold.  Cameron put his hand.  It goes through to the bottom of the mold.  So, there's a hole.
FAILED.

So, then, I thought, let me put it in a deeper mold (aka bowl) and add more plaster.  Ok, hand placed.  I give it some minutes to dry.  I turned it over to remove it from the mold and it came flying out and busted.
FAILED

So, then, I thought, let me get online and do some Googling because obviously I don't know a thing about plaster.  Let me tell you, when you watch someone else do something like this, they make it look so much easier than it is.  I actually made it through the hand printing and the dumping out of the mold to the decorating phase.  The kids and I (well, Cassidy and I) had 2 hand prints looking very pretty.  I easily picked the one I was working on up and gently....ok, not so gently dropped it on the table.
FAILED

Cassidy was working on hers and she really worked hard on it, too.  It had dried for a while and I was showing it off to someone hours later and picked it up by the corner and it broke off.
FAILED.

And yes, she wanted to kill me.

Seems like I had not read all the way through the online instructions that stated "Let dry completely.  Overnight is best."  before you painted/decorated.
FAILED.

So, 5 hours into it and not one stepping stone even halfway complete (not to mention the huge mess it made), we gave it up.  I may try again tomorrow...or I may just go buy some cards.   Maybe I will just print this story out and give it to the Moms we love.  It's the thought that counts, right?