Salt Dough Prayer Stones

Once the dough was dry we painted them with metallic paints. This gave them a shiny finish. We found the red paint difficult to use because it did not cover very well. People who chose red had to do several coats to get a good result.

Once the paint had dried (which was pretty quick) we started to add our writing and decorations. Then the next lot of problems started. Some of us used glitter glue pens to write with and they were a disaster. The solution was to wipe the glitter writing off before it dried and then use a vivid marker instead. It turned out to be quite tricky to place our writing so it was even and looked right. Working on the prototypes helped us to get our 'real' prayer stones right.

Some of us put too many decorations on and that made it hard to read the words. The saying ' less is more' certainly applied during this part of the process.

The last part of the process was to varnish our prototype stones. We found that we had to apply the varnish very carefully. If we put to much on it 'puddled' in the dips and grooves and dried white. Also, if too much varnish was used, the excess would drip off the stone and make it stick to the paper it was drying on. This meant a few of us had to repaint and start again.