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The fossil/rock club that I belong to was asked to be part of a craft show in Morrison, Iowa this past weekend. The president asked for assistance months ago. I did not volunteer initially because it was a 2.5 hour drive for me. But as of Thursday, help was still needed. What I didn't realize was that in addition to my physical attendance, I was to put together a project for children!!! Now this is Thursday evening and I needed to be in Iowa Saturday. The president informed me that last year 200 youngsters went through their set up. So here is my project and results: I decided to make 200 rocks full of fossils for the kids to open. Having never done this before and only 24 hours to prepare, I was a bit nervous. The following recipe was found on TFF. @caldigger made the suggestion of using dry wall powder instead of plaster of paris. I used both. Plaster of paris dried faster and was a harder finished product. Dry wall powder, on the other hand, being markedly cheaper, $9 for a bag that made me grunt carrying it to the car, and the ease of breaking open for the children, I would recommend it over plaster of paris. As for sand and the drywall powder, different proportions were tried but I felt a 1 part sand to 2 parts drywall powder worked the best. Bright and early Friday morning I collected enough loose fossils to embed in the plaster. This was my work site. Notice the bottle of cinnamon, a suggestion for coloring the fossils in the article. Save the cinnamon for what it was intended for, human consumption. I will speak on coloring the "rocks" later: And the work begins. First blobs of plaster were laid out. DO NOT PLACE ON NEWSPAPER!!!! Use wax paper. The children were quick to point out that there was lettering on their "rocks". The dye of the newspaper bled through onto the plaster. Next, liberally wet your hands with Pam cooking oil then grab a handful of fossils. Roll them around in your hands for awhile until coated lightly with the oil. Push each into the plaster. This did wonders at keeping plaster residue off of the fossils. At this point, I tried many ways to cover the fossils up. My best and quickest results came by letting the bottom plaster firm just a bit and then pouring a thinner layer of plaster over the top. Now to speak on coloring the "rocks". I tried cinnamon, I tried painting. Neither technique thrilled me. And to paint 200, not going to happen. So I was thinking of what to do when I looked down at the "filthy"bowl of water that I would rinse my brush out in. Why not dip a nice white rock into it and see what happened. It worked GREAT at instilling a fairly natural color to the stark white and one can color 200 items in about 5 minutes. I experimented with different colors in the water. The examples in the back of the picture below came out the best. I did find that to create a little 2 tone look, lightly brush the colored rock with a different color while it is still wet from it's bath and it added to it's look tremendously. Here is my first 100. And yes there are a few pink ones. I always wanted my daughter to be a "tom boy", but she grew up a "girly girl". She is now grown and on her own and we recently took her bed out of her bedroom. I found about 20 small "diamonds" in the carpet where the bed used to rest. Why not add these to some pink plaster (along with some fossils). They went like hotcakes and brought smiles when opened. And in all honesty, the children chose the pink and white samples over the browns. So in the future, maybe I would not try and mimic rock. And make orange, green, red, pink, blue, and yellow ones.
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