Do you ever pick some­thing up at the store, think ooooh I could make some­thing cute with this, throw it i your shop­ping cart only to stash it away in your craft clos­et? Good. I knew I could­n’t be the only one. That was me about 3 years ago with the cutest lit­tle set of thrift­ed gar­den tools. They have been sit­ting in the clos­et, shuf­fled around for a bit for I final­ly got the urge to make the cutest sim­ple Spring gar­den tool decor you ever did see!

That’s the think about inspi­ra­tion some­times. You lit­er­al­ly nev­er know when it’s going to hit, I walked into my craft clos­et grabbed a scrap board, looked up and there were those lit­tle gar­den tools I had stashed away all these years. Light­bulb! Here is what I did and the sup­plies I end­ed up using.

Supplies

• Small gar­den tools
• Scrap Board
• 3 shades of chalk paint (I used Laven­der, Moss and Plaster)
• Pati­na Met­al Effects Kit
• Old soup can
• Rib­bon
• Hot Glue
• E6000
• Green­ery and/or Span­ish Moss
• Jum­bo Pop­si­cle Sticks

Part One — Paint Smear

The foun­da­tion of this project is a good board and a lit­tle bit of cre­ative paint smear­ing (more on that tech­nique soon). It is a quick way to get the look of an aged chip­py wood piece with­out hav­ing to go search­ing for one. 

I like to start by stain­ing what­ev­er sur­face I am work­ing with. A dark stain will shine through all of the faux paint chips and lay­ers you will create.

The more paint col­ors you use at this step the more years of age and wear you’re adding to your wood. I lay­ered up Laven­der and Moss by Waver­ly, being care­ful to leave a bit of each col­or show­ing through.

The final step of the paint lay­er­ing process is your white lay­er. I like for this to be the heav­i­est coat with bits and pieces of the oth­er two col­ors peek­ing through.

Step Two- Patina

This step is my favorite. I used a pati­na kit by Met­al Effects which is linked below. All step by step instruc­tions are list­ed on the box for this process. 

After paint and primer from the Met­al Effects kit this is what your gar­den tools will look like If pati­na isn’t your thing, they also have a DIY rust kit that I used on this hard­ware in my kitchen.

They will trans­form to THIS when­ev­er sprayed with an acti­va­tor spray includ­ed in the kit. Its best to let allow this part of the process time to process on it’s own with­out the help of a heat gun or dryer.

Step 3 ‑Embellish

And of course the final steps of the process include secur­ing every­thing in place includ­ing the gar­den tools and green­ery. I attached the soup can to the board with a com­bi­na­tion of E6000 and hot glue. It’s my favorite now and lat­er con­coc­tion. The hot glue is an imme­di­ate adhe­sive white the E6000 takes longer to dry but it has an excel­lent strong hold.