Foam garden sculptures. "FOX"
To make figurines you will need:
Mounting foam
Foam gun.
Foam cleaner. (needed to flush the gun, and to clean hands)
Cotton gloves, more than one pair.
For the manufacture of this figurine, I used an ordinary empty kefir bottle.
1 Pour sand into the bottle (for gravity, so that the figure is not blown away by the wind). Foam the entire surface of the bottle. Attention! It is necessary to foam gradually, layer by layer, giving time to dry each layer. The foam dries in about 10-15 minutes.2, 3 For the manufacture of paws, tail, I used a tube with a threaded wire. Stick the tail (the whole figure rests on it), paws (tubes), set the desired bend, foam the joints. Neck: Insert a toilet paper tube, lather. dry
4 Foam paws, tail.
5 To make the head, you can insert something round, foam it. Ears: Cut out of thick cardboard, soft plastic. Insert the ears into place, foam, dry. Mustache: Cut a thick fishing line, paint over with black paint from a balloon, insert. The eyes are rubber balls painted with the same paint.
paint the foam sculptures with oil paint, varnish on top (if the figurine is not painted with white paint, since the varnish gives yellowness).Foam sculpture for the garden! "KOLOBOK"
For the basis of the kolobok, I took a Christmas tree toy, you can use a plastic ball, something round. Foam the ball, with gradual drying layer by layer.
The handles are made from a tube with threaded wire. Set a bend, foam. The scarf is also foam. "Ears" on a scarf: Cut out leaves from cardboard, cut in, foam. With a sharp knife, cut out the eyes, mouth.
Inside the legs, ordinary wooden blocks, foam, setting the desired shape.
Paint over with oil paint, can be varnished.
Crafts from polyurethane foam can be made with your own hands in just a few hours.
If you have a disposable tank that hasn't run out yet, why not use it for the benefit of landscaping.
In this case, it is still better to resort to professional foam, and not household foam, since a small gun with a diameter of 2 mm is added to it.
Unusually simple and beautiful figurines made of polyurethane foam will become the property of your site. They will not leave indifferent either neighbors or just people passing by.
Materials for fakes from polyurethane foam
You will need:
- gloves;
- sprayer with pre-prepared water;
- polyethylene;
- aviation kerosene.
Kerosene is needed so that, upon completion of work with mounting foam, hands can be easily washed from building material.
Something will also come in handy for creating the basis for crafts from polyurethane foam with your own hands.
You can take an ordinary plastic bottle, an old pan or something else, which is not a pity.
With foam covering the auxiliary material, the creation of crafts will begin ...
You need to paint them carefully, and before carrying out this procedure
dry thoroughly in the shade. Drying takes at least a week, but if the foam layer is large, it is better to wait longer.
The paint is applied to the craft from mounting foam with your own hands every spring again. If this is not done, the foam may crack and the craft will deteriorate.
Foam craft ideas
If your site has a small pond, you can make a large green toad. This is especially true where many plants grow, especially large-leaved ones. In some cases, it is easier to make a lizard or a crocodile - who can do what.
In order not to miscalculate with the sizes and “fill your hand”, you can practice on plasticine. No matter how strange it may sound, but it is after testing on this simple material that it turns out to make chic crafts from polyurethane foam.
The same goes for the dough - if you like to bake delicious buns, pat animals - this will help you figure out what you can do better.
A great solution is to make turtles out of polyurethane foam. And it is not at all necessary to have a reservoir on the site. In addition, almost everyone has white paint, and it is now cheaper than colored ones.
Turtles are easier to dye, their shells can be alternated with natural ones. If, during the creation of the craft, bumps appeared that should not be, they can be cut off with a sharp knife.
Similarly, the situation will be with rounded details - if they need to be sharpened, the excess is simply cut off.
Crafts from polyurethane foam not only decorate street views, they can also be made for the home. Funny frogs will bring smiles to people passing by!
So, as an original New Year's decor, you can make a snowman out of foam, but you need to start creating in advance so that the material has time to dry well.
If you paint over the foam ahead of time, it will quickly crack.
How creators wake up
Man, as a rational being, tends to create. Often, creative qualities are found literally out of the blue and where you don’t expect them at all. Just one inner push is enough. For example, a blog post with illustrations. And comments: "Oh, what a beauty! Where did you buy it? Did you do it yourself? But how? From what?" The last question is usually specified several times. After a while - joyfully: "Oh, girls, I did it!". And then embarrassed: "Just don't tell your husband, otherwise I spent all his mounting foam ...". And others rejoice: "Hurrah! Another homemade product has appeared in the country!".
Mounting foam
Polyurethane foam, also known as polyurethane foam sealant, was invented more than 60 years ago, but began to be actively used in construction only in the 1980s by the Swedes. With its help, door and window blocks are mounted, seams and cracks are “healed”, and communications are isolated. Compressed in an aerosol can, it takes up very little space. The mounting foam released from there quickly increases in volume up to 40 times and hardens (polymerizes) to a rigid state, acquiring a light yellow color. Does not tolerate direct sunlight: first darkens, and then begins to crack. The ease of decorating with mounting foam and its availability bribed people with ingenuity and a creative streak. Home-made garden sculptures began to appear en masse at dachas and suburban areas, relatively cheap compared to finished products.
Basic Tools
It is best to release mounting foam (and not cheap, as it keeps its shape worse) from a professional reusable gun with a handle and a metal nozzle - only it is able to regulate the volume of portions. So that the gun does not turn into a disposable one, at the end of work it must be washed with a polyurethane foam cleaner. The foam itself is very sticky, so wear thin household gloves. The exception is when you need to correct a slightly dried up figure - here you need hands moistened with water. When the mass is completely dry, you can cut out any crafts from the mounting foam, wielding a sharp clerical knife.
And we have such a frame
Even the most simple sculpture needs a base on which the foam will be applied. That is a framework. Fantasy itself will tell you what is best to use. For example, for Kolobok, an old children's ball suggests itself, for a hefty boletus mushroom - a plastic bottle (leg) and a round candy box (hat); a frame for a charming donkey can be assembled from a ten-liter bottle, a tin can and wooden scraps. Part of the frame can be bent from wire (for example, a lizard's tail or a swan's neck). To make crafts made of polyurethane foam not only beautiful, but also stable, weight them (sand in a PET bottle will be enough).
Apply and strengthen
The room where you will create from mounting foam should be well ventilated. You can arrange a workshop in the open air, but only in dry weather. Apply foam to the frame gradually: take your time with the next layer until the previous one dries out (this takes no more than a quarter of an hour). Crafts made from polyurethane foam created by your hands must be protected from cracking by puttying. Acrylic putty or dry mortar with pasty acrylic supermastic is best suited for this. Another way is gauze bandages soaked in cement mortar: they need to lay the entire figure.
Famous master's brush
To paint your garden sculptures, use acrylic or oil paints of any color. Allow the product to "rest" for a few days before painting. Be sure to paint with your own hands, armed with thick brushes. Put one layer of paint - wait until it dries properly, and paint again; should be several layers. To make the sculpture not only bright, but also shiny, varnish it. For this, polyurethane varnish for concrete floors is excellent. At the same time and add strength. Everything! Your polyurethane foam crafts are waiting for their chosen place, where they will calmly stand in the sun and rain. But when winter comes, it is better to put them in a warm and covered room. Just in case.
Having the opportunity to go out of town is excellent, and if the rest also takes place in your own summer cottage, it’s generally great. But only standard dachas, where we see only cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes and other necessary vegetables and fruits, evoke more melancholy than a desire to relax. And you don't want to work in such an atmosphere. But what if you put a little imagination and effort and turn your summer cottage into a real miracle? Believe me, your household after the transformation of the dacha will not want to return to the city. And for such a transformation to take place, you will need crafts for the garden with your own hands. What do we mean? Watch, read, choose and be inspired.
Original crafts for the garden and cottages with your own hands from improvised materials
Of course, today most agricultural shops and flower stalls offer a variety of garden sculptures, pots and other beauty. But the pleasure is by no means cheap: to completely transform your site, you will need to pay a tidy sum. Do you want to spend? Not? Then you have come to the right place. We will tell you how to create all this beauty with your own hands from materials that almost every thrifty owner can find.
So, in this section of our site, ideas are collected that are worthy of taking a place on your site. We invite you to get acquainted with the technology of making flowerbeds from tires, original flower beds from plastic bottles, figurines of birds, animal gnomes from the same bottles and other materials. And together with us you can create real castles for your children, small fountains, relaxation areas, etc.
In addition to "traditional" materials, we will use completely unusual ones, for example, old typewriters, cases of various toy cars, children's buckets and much, much more. In principle, from our articles you will learn that you can decorate your garden or summer cottage with anything, and such crafts for the garden with your own hands will surely delight your loved ones and guests.
Collection of ideas for crafts
Our articles and reviews are devoted not only to the materials from which you can create, but also to a variety of ideas.
We will tell you what exactly you can do in your country house. How do you like the idea of do-it-yourself garden crafts such as:
- garden gnomes and other fairy tale characters;
- children's slides;
- fountains;
- hammocks and sun loungers;
- benches;
- swing;
- flower beds and flower beds;
- figurines from plants;
- Japanese stone gardens;
- original armchairs and deck chairs;
- play areas;
- houses and huts;
- birdhouses and pens for birds;
- interestingly designed booths.
Do you think this is the whole list? In vain! This is only a small part of what can be placed on your summer cottage.
The location of crafts in the garden or on the site
It’s not enough to come up with and do crafts, you need to find a place for it on the site. Therefore, we have devoted a number of articles to how exactly you can place everything that you create.
The articles contain many descriptions of different gardens and cottages with photographs in which you will see entire families of pigs walking in the garden, swans from tires strewn with flowers, which are located near the porch of the house, and so on.
It is important not to overdo it when decorating the site and correctly combine crafts for the garden with your own hands. The fact is that a large pile of everything will only repel.
How to combine different crafts, create whole plots from them, organize a recreation and games area - all this will be discussed in our materials.
It will not only be easy to create with us, but most importantly, it will be interesting!
Do-it-yourself garden figures from polyurethane foam are quite easy to make, for this you need a minimum of improvised materials. Armed with a can of polyurethane foam, you can make almost any figure that will become a real decoration of your garden.
Using a plastic bottle and polyurethane foam, you can independently make an original garden figure.
How to make a stork from polyurethane foam?
You will need:
- plastic eggplant from under the water;
- thick wire;
- Styrofoam;
- stationery tape;
- mounting foam;
- wood chip;
- electrodes (for bird legs);
- sharp knife;
- poultry feathers;
- paint and varnish for facade works.
A stork made of polyurethane foam with your own hands will be the highlight of your garden. The first step is to build a frame, which will subsequently be covered with foam. The basis of the frame is a plastic eggplant from under the water for 5 liters. From the side of the bottom is placed the head of a bird, the neck serves as a tail.
The stork's neck is made of thick wire: a small piece of foam plastic is applied to the bottle, it is pierced with a wire at an angle so that the wire rests against the wall of the eggplant. To make a bird's head, take a small piece of rounded foam, put it on the end of the wire. The nose is made from a piece of wood or a small piece of wire.
The legs of a bird are made from electrodes that are out of order, and metal fittings can also be used for this. At the junction of the legs with the body, pieces of foam are placed, since the stork's legs have a thickening at the top. The stork will be inserted into the ground with electrodes, so the figure does not need additional weighting, but if desired, you can fill the eggplant with sand.
For the wings, flat pieces of polystyrene in the form of a semicircle are suitable - they are attached with wire to the sides of the eggplant. In order to give the frame the necessary strength, it is wrapped with tape. Work begins with the head, gradually moving to the base of the legs of the bird. It is not necessary to wrap the electrodes with adhesive tape.
PVA glue is used to prime the figure.
After all the parts are fastened, proceed to shaping with foam. The foam is squeezed out in small zigzags or stripes, and there is no need to try to accurately repeat the contours of the bird, since everything superfluous will then be cut off. Important: the foam is laid in thin layers with obligatory intermediate drying. This building material dries quickly enough, so the next layer can be applied after 15-30 minutes.
After the foam hardens, they begin to form a sculpture: with the help of a sharp knife, they cut off everything superfluous. It remains only to paint the stork. In order to reduce paint consumption, it is necessary to apply a primer, which forms a protective film and will not allow the porous foam to absorb the paint. As a primer, you can use PVA glue diluted with water in a ratio of 1: 2. The neck and body of the bird are painted white, the tips of the wings and the tail are black, the nose and legs are covered with red paint. The result is fixed with any facade varnish. At the end of the work, a bunch of real goose, duck or rooster feathers is inserted into the tail hole (bottle neck). The figurine of a stork is placed on a flower bed, deepening the electrodes (legs) into the ground.
How to make a donkey out of polyurethane foam?
You will need:
- eggplant from under the water for 10 l;
- can;
- wire;
- sharp knife;
- mounting foam;
- glue gun or double-sided tape;
- wooden boards (for legs);
- facade putty;
- primer;
- facade paint and varnish.
Foam figures can be small or large, it all depends on your imagination and the materials available. To make a donkey, you need a plastic eggplant from under the water for 10 liters. A tin can is perfect for the head, and if there is none on the farm, then you can use a cropped 5-liter eggplant. The legs of the donkey are made of wooden planks, the tail is made of wire or glazing bead. The head and legs are glued with a glue gun or double-sided tape, the tail is inserted at a slight angle into the hole made in advance.
In order to make the figure heavier, it is necessary to fill the eggplant with dry sand - it is better to do this after the glue has dried.
In the manufacture of garden figures, a special gun for polyurethane foam is used.
Layers of polyurethane foam are applied to the prepared frame. It is necessary to allow the previous layer to dry for 15-20 minutes, only after that the next layer of foam is applied.
Donkey ears are made of wire, which is bent in the form of a semicircle. Then the wire frame is wrapped with tape or paper, inserted into the donkey's head, and then foam is applied to the ears. Next, the foam is cut with a knife in such a way as to give the figure the desired shape.
In order for the sculpture to look believable, it is necessary to apply facade putty on top of the mounting foam, having previously primed the product. The primer improves the adhesion of materials, so this process should not be ignored. Small details are worked out on raw putty: nostrils are cut out, animal eyes are made. After the putty dries, the surface is rubbed with fine-grained sandpaper. The donkey figurine is painted with acrylic facade paint, and then covered with waterproof varnish.
Foam mushrooms
You will need:
- plastic bottle;
- Styrofoam;
- wire;
- stationery knife;
- primer;
- facade putty;
- acrylic facade paint and varnish.
Even a child can make mushrooms from polyurethane foam, for this you do not need to have the talent of a sculptor or artist. To make a mushroom leg, you will need a plastic bottle. To give the figurine stability, the bottle is filled with pebbles or dry sand. Foam is applied to the bottle in such a way that a thickening characteristic of the fungus is obtained at the bottom. The foam is distributed in thin layers with intermediate drying.
To make a mushroom cap, they take foam plastic, cut a circle out of it, and you don’t need to try to repeat the exact shape, since in nature there are no mushrooms with perfectly round hats. Foam is applied to the foam in such a way that a cone is gradually formed. A strong wire is inserted into the leg of the mushroom, a cap is put on it, the junction of the parts can be smeared with glue. Next, apply the last layer of foam, let it harden, and then cut off all the excess.
Polyurethane foam is a porous material that easily absorbs moisture, so the product must be primed. If this is not done, then the moisture from the putty will turn into foam, which will make the finishing material drier, and subsequently this may lead to cracking of the surface. If the farm does not have a primer, then it can be replaced with gelatin. Gelatin is soaked in cold water (15 g per 100 ml), allowed to swell, and then melted in a water bath. Melted gelatin is diluted with warm water. The figure is treated with this solution 2-3 times with intermediate drying.
Next, facade putty is applied to the fungus (can be replaced with plaster) and left to dry completely. The surface is first sanded with medium-grain sandpaper, then fine-grained paper is used. The product is primed again - if this is not done, then the paint consumption will double. The cap of the mushroom is painted brown, white with the addition of ocher is used for the legs. The work is covered with facade or yacht varnish in 2-3 layers.
Garden figures made of polyurethane foam will bring an atmosphere of comfort, make the estate individual and unique. Everyone can make a fungus, a stork or a donkey, if you show a little imagination and acquire the necessary materials.