Concrete garden mushroom project

Here is a fun project that would be fairly simple for anyone to do at home, and kids can help.  This came from Creative Concrete Ornaments for the Garden by Sherri Warner Hunter, though the mushrooms in the book are far more finished looking than our first attempt.  They are still cute.

First, we filled some plastic storage bins with sand.  Any large containers will work for this.  Then we made indentations in the general shape of mushroom tops, inverted.  Anouk placed glass gems and bottle tops in the sand for decoration.

Next, we mixed up the concrete (one part cement, three parts sand, about one part water) and let Anouk put the concrete into the forms.  *We mixed it too thick.  It should have been pour-able.  Now we know.

We pressed small pieces of rebar into the centers and allowed them to begin setting up while we made the stem forms out of tar paper.  I'm sure there are other materials, but the book called for tar paper, and we had plenty of scrap from building projects.  We made them into tubes, held together with duct tape, and placed them around the rebar.  We then poured concrete into the tubes.

We were supposed to wait 12 hours, but they were ready to unwrap in about 6 (probably because the mix was too thick.)  I had to fill in some gaps with grout, but they are pretty cute, and now they have a happy home in our shade garden.