Making garden figures with your own hands: the subtleties and secrets of technology

Recently, decorating summer cottages and household plots, especially with your own hands, has become a fashionable and popular occupation and hobby for many people. This is not strange, since in addition to the main goal - harvesting, many people go to the country house to relax and have a good time away from the bustle of the city. Therefore, almost all owners of summer cottages and garden plots are puzzled to create the most cozy, comfortable atmosphere, as well as to give the space an aesthetically unique look.

More recently, it has become fashionable to decorate the site with original, and sometimes funny, figures and small sculptures.

Of course, many will prefer to buy ready-made figurines, for example, made of stone or plastic, in a store where a huge variety of different fairy-tale characters, animals, and so on are presented. However, it is much more interesting to do the work with your own hands. Thus, in each of the statues, you can put a piece of your love and, of course, creativity. The materials at hand are quite suitable for creating any conceived figurine. The process of “inventing” and “sculpting” your character is always very pleasant and fascinating for children. You can introduce them to the creative process.

There are a lot of ideas for creating landscape sculptures. These can be your favorite fairy-tale heroes, for example, multi-colored gnomes, the fierce Serpent Gorynych, the cunning Puss in Boots, the Golden Fish or the various-feather Firebird. There is no limit to the flow of fantasy!

An important rule is that decorative figures must match the design of the space and the appearance of the house. If there is a small pond in the garden, then the army of funny frogs will perfectly fit into its space, and brave golden-maned lions, sitting on the lawn near the house, will be able to guard and guard the home. Some craftsmen and craftswomen are so keen on the process that a summer cottage or garden turns into a real fabulous city.

Garden figurines can be made with your own hands from a variety of materials.

Gypsum is a popular material in garden figurines and is easy to use. One of the main conditions in working with plaster is that the figures must have strength and resistance to moisture. Precision in manufacturing does not play an important role. Small figures, as a rule, are made by hand without the basis and the use of any equipment.

Scale models, where it is necessary to reproduce massive body parts or work with large parts, require a reinforced frame. It performs the function of the "skeleton" of the product. The finished work is fixed to the foundation using protruding foot elements.

The sculpting technology itself is quite simple. A mixture of diluted gypsum with PVA glue is laid out layer by layer, allowing each previous layer to dry.If desired, the finished plaster product can be painted and varnished.

To decorate the garden, you can make a variety of shapes from wire yourself. These can be both self-sufficient products and decorative elements, such as stands for flowers, lamps, as well as graceful vases. With the help of wire, you can make a decorative brazier that resembles the image of an animal or character, it can also be small benches, a table, miniature gazebos and more.

Nowadays, such a trend as topiary, or in other words, garden shrub sculpture, is gaining popularity.

As you know, plastic is easy to cut, paint and retain its shape for a long time. One of the most spectacular products made from plastic bottles is the palm tree. In addition, a tropical plant in the middle of a garden or summer cottage looks rather exotic and unique. To perform this work, you need to stock up on a large amount of plastic containers in green and brown shades.

Very often, various flowers, trees and birds are made from this material. The technology is very simple, but the finished work looks really attractive.

Wood is a unique material from which you can build many options for garden crafts. Having mastered the basic techniques of carving and burning wood, even an ordinary old tree stump can be turned into a work of art. Wooden decorations look natural and are able to transform even the darkest corners of a garden or summer cottage.

Wood is affordable, and the range of its varieties is very wide - it can be twigs, old driftwood, stumps, plywood sheets or chipboard. The tree is very pleasant to work with, easy to handle.

Products made of birch branches look incredibly beautiful. Even without surface treatment, woodwork will look very attractive, and if you varnish it, you can extend its life and make it stronger.

Cement cannot be called a "capricious" material, but in order to get a high-quality and durable result of working with it, you must follow a number of rules and a clear sequence, in a word, you will have to try. As a rule, to prepare a standard cement mortar, it is necessary to mix cement, water, building sand and tile adhesive (it is used to avoid cracks in the finished craft).

Cement requires long-term drying. It may take 7 to 10 days for a cement figurine to completely harden. To smooth out roughness, use sandpaper or a file.

Metal products are primarily characterized by high strength. Often such products in the garden perform not only a decorative, but also a practical function. These can be small forged benches, lanterns, openwork flower stands and more. As a rule, people prefer to buy forged figures in stores or ask to make them to order. Such a pleasure is quite expensive, although it is distinguished by its uniqueness and is often the author's work.

But with the effort and imagination, digging through the rubble of old improvised metal materials that somehow slowly accumulate in every house (and even more so in the country), you can build a real masterpiece.

For example, old nails can turn out to be excellent stems for daisies or dandelions, old coins that have become obsolete can serve as feathers of a miracle bird or scales of a fabulous fish.You can fasten metal parts together with the help of Moment glue, unless, of course, the product is not very large.

You can use a soldering iron or blowtorch to hold the miniature metal parts together. To improve the decorative appearance of the finished product, it is coated with a special paint designed to be applied to a metal surface.

Concrete is a material from which any shape and shape can be recreated. Many ideas with the use of concrete can be carried out by a person who has not previously dealt with this material. It is worth remembering that gloves are always worn when working with cement or concrete.

The essence and principle of working with concrete is the same as with cement. To give the figure the required dimensions, concrete is poured into trays or shapes, left to dry, and then polished and decorated.

Perhaps one of the most fashionable garden solutions is the topiary. As mentioned above, topiary is a green sculpture made of artificial grass or moss. The product is capable of enlivening the landscape of the site, as well as in the most natural way to fit into the picture of the environment.

Making topiary takes a lot of time and effort. However, with perseverance and patience, everyone can do the job. The easiest way to make hollow figures is to use a metal frame, which can be easily purchased at any gardening store. The frame is in the form of a lattice with sufficient clearances to allow access to the inside. A mixture of soil with peat or moss is placed in the "core" of the metal structure.

The simplest and cheapest material to decorate your garden or summer cottage are ordinary stones. From stones of different sizes and shapes, you can create the most unusual compositions. Many of us, returning home from a summer vacation, can neither take with us even a small armful of sea stones that lie in the "long" box, only taking up space. Just sea pebbles would be a great material for any craft.

From such stones, you can lay a bright path, various mosaics, lay out multi-colored stones with the inscriptions of the names of the owners of a country house, make a homemade small fountain of stones, and much more.

What self-taught designers do not use in order to refine their favorite summer cottage. It can be almost anything that comes to hand: old cups, forks, spoons and plates, watering cans, obsolete cars and carts, tires, plastic bags, nails and so on. The list can go on and on.

It turns out that you can also create real works of art from old car tires. Rubber is a durable material that is resistant to both temperature changes and increased moisture. The most popular landscape decorations using car tires are homemade flower beds, figures of various animals, sandboxes, swings, and so on.

In working with tires, the following set of tools is most often used: jigsaw, knife, electric drill, grinder and metal saw. Rubber is quite pliable and easy to stain.

Polyfoam is easy to process and weighs almost nothing - these are the key points that a beginner decorator of a summer cottage should know. That is why each figurine made of this material must be fixed on the ground with a cement mortar.Polyfoam, as a rule, can deteriorate from interaction with acetone and dichloroethane. However, working with him is easy and pleasant. The details of the foam figurine adhere perfectly to each other, and in shape can be both flat and voluminous.

The right shape for making figures is the right key to success. Speaking about filling figures, in the first place in terms of practicality and convenience are silicone molds or molds, the main advantage of which is the easy separation of the filled product from the mold itself. This is more relevant when working with gypsum mortar. Also, in some cases, it is necessary to use special drying chambers if we are talking about large-scale figures.

But in most cases, it is the improvised means that are used as molds for filling the future product. Take, for example, the simplest and most popular gypsum figure, the mushroom. You can take a cut-off plastic bottle as a leg, and an ordinary small bowl or plate to fill the cap.

Many owners of summer cottages have a sculpture of a dog next to the house. A faithful friend will always protect your home from trouble and please the eye, besides, 2018 is the year of the dog, therefore it is believed that the presence of an animal sculpture in the garden or in the country is especially favorable for the karma of space.

The following is a small step-by-step a master class on making a dog, where the main material is ordinary (preferably dense) bags of any color.

• We form the body of the dog from foam rubber and cover it with fabric. Sew on the ears and tail from the same pieces of fabric.

• From the bags cut into strips, we make makhrushki (this should resemble a fringe).
• Then, starting from the back, towards the head, we sew the doggie's foam rubber frame with cut strips with fringes.

• Sew on the nose (can be cut from fabric or leather).
• Sew on beaded eyes.
• We decorate the dog with bows or a collar.

As it became clear from the article, making figurines for the garden with your own hands is a whole creative process, where there is no limit to perfection.

Below are some successful works done by yourself.

You can learn how to make a cute cat out of plaster with your own hands from the following video.