Stacked Hypertufa Garden Art

Painted stacked Hypertufa balls.

Last week I blogged that I was finishing up some partially completed projects.  One of them was to paint a project that I had made earlier in the year.  Earlier in the year I had cast some hypertufa spheres.  When the molds were filled, I had some hypertufa mix left over.  I decided that I would make make balls out of them, molding them by hand.  I thought that possibly I could make some decorative object with them.  At the time I really did not have a fully thought out idea, but it was either make something with it or throw the stuff in the trash.  So here is my project made from left over Hypertufa.

Tried to paint to look like granite and marble.

Trying for moss covered look on some.

I guess that I should begin by explaining Hypertufa.  It is a mix of concrete, portland cement, and vermiculite.  It is generally mixed with water as you would if mixing concrete.  The good thing about Hypertufa is that it is much lighter than concrete.  For example, a ten inch diameter sphere made of Hypertufa will way somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty to twenty-five pounds where a concrete sphere of that size would weigh close to ninety pounds.  If you would like to view my mixing proportions and comments on making and casting with Hypertufa, please read by blog posts dated from April 27th, 2014 through May 14, 2014 on this blog.  The actual blog address is folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com
You can get to those dates by clicking on the month, which is on the right hand side of the

Before the balls were painted.

page.

Anyway, I made the small Hypertufa balls by patting them with gloved hands.  I left them to dry.  The small balls did not stay spherical.  The balls flattened on the bottom.  So I now had flattened balls.  Since the bottom was more or less flat, I decided to stack them up as you sometimes see rocks stacked in a Zen garden.  You could more or less get them to stay balanced with a little patience.  But why worry about them falling over every time you weed the garden?  If I could find a way to make them stay in place permanently then I would not have to spend time restacking them every time they were knocked over.  I
just happend to have the very thing, some pre-mixed thin set mortar.  You guessed it: I had it left over from another project.  The mortar held the stacked stones in place.  One of the stacked stones was overbalanced, and I had to break it apart and re-mortar it, but that was essentially my fault that I did not make sure what it check it as closely as I should have.  Because of that, I will have to go back and touch up one section.

I had stacked the balls early because I was unsure whether the mortar was going to work on this project or not.  It did.  Even if I had painted the balls first, I would still have to paint the mortar in between, so I am not sure that it would be better that way.  You can see the color of the thin-set mortar between the two balls where I made the repair.  Also, the hold might have ended up against the paint, you only have a hold on the coat of paint rather than the hypertufa.   So I can't really say that would be any better.

Anyway, I learned some useful information to pass on in regard to painting Hypertufa.  It is rough like cement.  I tried both liquid craft paints and heavier (student grade) acrylic artist paints.  Their different characteristics played out differently on Hypertufa.  The liquid paints were able to get into smaller areas easily, while the thicker artists paints generally stayed on the surface.  I found that I could get a more granular look to the balls if I painted first with a liquid paint base coat and then brushed a thicker paint coat over top of it.  I had fun experimenting with different techniques of dabbing on dots, smearing, and dry brushing on the paints.  Some I tried to make look like specific types of rock such as granite, basalt,  or marble.  Others I tried to make look as if they were moss colored.  It was fun.

I had hoped to show pictures of them sitting out in the garden, but it has been raining for three days.  Sometimes it has only been drizzle or fog.  Other times it was pouring rain.  This is part of that winter storm that has made a mess of things all throughout the South.  I'm really glad it is only rain. 
All in all, it has been too cold and wet to get outside.  So today's pictures of them is just on my worktable.  I will shop pic of them in the garden sooner or later.