I discovered my first rock in June 2018, situated next to the signpost at the end of road near my bus stop. The rock had a self-portrait of a child on one side:
And this cryptic message on the reverse:
As soon as I got home I looked up the name on Facebook and discovered the World of Rocks!
Basically, you buy a bag of rocks, paint them, add your name on the back and then hide them somewhere. When people find them, hopefully they will post a photo on the Facebook group and then either hide them again or keep them as a souvenir.
There are LOTS of rock painting groups on Facebook, national ones, international ones, themed ones and local ones. The larger groups seem to be based around painting gorgeous rocks and sharing techniques while the local ones are more about finding and hiding the rocks.
I joined the local group, posted about the rock I found and got a response from the parent of the little girl who made it saying how happy she was someone had found her rock. Then I asked people where they get their blank rocks from. A very nice man offered to let me have some he wasn't using, we arranged an exchange for a book and I got my first bag of rocks. I then went out and bought a packet of Sharpie pens, the cheapest recommendation for beginners.
Here's my first ever rock:
The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Maybe I should have mentioned - I work in a bookshop! My first rocks were all based on children's book characters. They are still my favourite subject to paint.
As time went on I got more and more into the hobby and bought myself some Posca Paint Pens, these are acrylic paints pens very popular with rock painters for the beautiful vibrant colours. I also experimented with different sealants and now use a layer of PVA glue to seal the colour and a layer of yacht varnish to seal the rock and make it waterproof.
I have four main places I like to hide my rocks:
1. a local park popular with rock hiders.
2. a local wood and nature reserve
3. the streets near our house and a Primary School
4. the bookshop where I work.
I love rocking the streets on the first day of a new term so the kids have a little treat when they come out of school. We also have themed events at work where I make a big batch of rocks and we hide them in the shop.
For this blog, I have added the rocks in groups and used labels to identify each type. If you want to find all the book themed rocks, click the "Book" label as an example.
I hope you enjoy looking through the posts. There will be links in the sidebar to artists who inspire me and I hope to add a page of useful links and tutorials in due course.
