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Backyard Entrepreneur^TM

Garden Path Stonescaper

Stepping stones to success

frog stepping stone

Make money as an entrepreneur working at home by designing garden paths, casting unique stepping stones, making sundials, designing garden art, and creating garden games -- Garden decor.

Make Sell Stepping Stones

footprint stepping stones

Did you know you can make your own stepping stones as a stonescaper ? Make them and personalize them for your customers. You can buy the molds you need from hobby stores or online. In some cases, you can make do with forms you find around the house. Rubber trash can lids are good as they are flexible and the concrete, once set, can snap out.

You can buy a special concrete stepping stone mix in various colors. See our resources below. It is expensive. You can buy cheaper concrete mix at the hardware store. A quick-set kind is good. Shift out most of the stones. Add just enough water to pour. If it is too wet, it takes longer to dry and is not as solid and may break. Always wear a mask when working with the fine dust of concrete.

sunflower

Use all kinds of designs such as stepping stones in the shape of bare feet, leaves, or the traditional circles. These can be painted to look like lady bugs, sunflowers, or happy faces. Make stepping stones in the shape of your state. Once you create the mold of your state, sell it to others who might be interested in doing the same thing.

faith stepping stone

Write a message or name into the wet concrete. Set your pet's paw print in stone. Be certain that you wash the residue off the paw before releasing him/her. Embellish with marbles, bits of colored rocks, shells, beads, memorabilia, and colored tiles. You could even have loved ones place their handprints into the concrete and sign their initials and the date. This is a beautiful and creative way to mark a special date such as moving into a new home.

Experiment with various kinds of concrete mix. Stepping stones with lots of pebbles are nice. Experiment with adding special concrete color to the mix.

When you go on vacation, pick up all kinds of items to keep and preserve in your stepping stone. You do not have to embed the entire shell into the concrete. Just the imprint looks nice. You can sell these marked with the place from which you acquired the shell.

Sell Stepping Stone Games

bear track stepping stones

Make and sell garden games. Create an entire board game meandering around the perimeter of your garden. Write messages on the stepping stones like “Go back 3”, “Advance 4”, and “Skip a turn”. Make up the rules of the game. Give it a name and a theme. For example: “The Flight of the Bumblebee” or “Lucky Lady Bug”. Paint some of the stones to match the theme. If you land on one of the stones painted like the theme of the garden game, you get a special prize or get to draw from a deck of cards with special instructions like “run around the old pecan tree three times”. Once you have it installed, show it off and sell the exact replica or the pattern to do-it-yourselfers. Make a set of stepping stones to look like wild animal tracks for kids to identify. Check out this site for animal track prints.

Making the garden game is the perfect outdoor activity for families. Sell kits. Package to sell locally or over the Internet. Contact retail outlets.

Make and Sell Concrete Sundials

Find instructions on the Internet. We found a great set of instructions in Mother Earth News. Knowing the history of sundials will help in your business. You can take this a step further to the professional level. Beautiful permanent human sunclocks are wonderful aditions to any landscaping project. Check out Sunclocks for instructions and amazing photographs to help you get an idea of how this could become a business opportunity for you.

Specialize in Garden Paths

Every backyard, no matter how small, needs a path to somewhere -- even if it is just to the trash can area. Design and create beautiful paths with handmade and personalized stepping stones, garden bridges, and dry stone fences.

Create romance, peace, and serenity. Have your designs and portfolio ready to show potential customers. You might have to do your backyard and a few neighbors paths for free or at a reduced price so that you can get the pictures you need for a portfolio or brochure.

In a little sunny spot on the garden path, put a sundial that you have made and personalized especially for your customer.

Engrave words about time into the sundial or stone nearby. See our stone engraver page for more ideas. Maybe use several stepping stones in a line to get the entire saying said. For example, print a line from Ecclesiastes 3: 1 – 8 on each of several stepping stones. Here are some ideas:

In good times and in bad.
Come grow old with me.
Time is free.
We live on borrowed time.
Make every moment count.
Time flies or tempus fugit
The sands of time
Time spent with ______ is never wasted.
Nothing lasts forever.
Time is money.