Color Concrete Garden Projects: Make Your Own Planters, Furniture, and Fire Pits Using Creative Techniques and Vibrant Finishes - Softcover

Nathan Smith has a BBA in business management with an emphasis in entrepreneurship. He started his journey with concrete in the form of countertops for his own home. The material was fascinating and the medium was too much to resist. Since its formation in 2007, Set in Stone has slowly assembled a team of talented and creative individuals. They all consider themselves a part of a concrete evolution, using the seemingly limitless material to enrich lives ultimately through the creative process. He resides in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He feels at home in the shop, on a bike in the woods, and especially hanging out with his family.

Michael Snyder is an artisan craftsman with a background in sculpture and carpentry. He works at Set in Stone, a concrete design company with a focus on making beautiful useful objects. He lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Charles Coleman is a photographer based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with over nine years in the field. His works are fostered from a desire to express stories through mediums ranging from tintype photography to video documentary. Visit charlescolemanphotography.com for more information.

Discover the colorful ways you can craft with concrete! 

Concrete is the perfect medium for outdoor crafts. It is versatile and durable, and it looks even better with time. Add the unexpected element of color, and you have the perfect recipe for vibrant, modern outdoor decor. This hands-on guide will take your outdoor space from gray to great. Concrete artisans Nathan Smith and Michael Snyder show you how to mix concrete, use forms and molds, and add color using stains, slurries, and other innovative techniques. Twenty creative step-by-step projects for furniture, planters, and art include an elegant tabletop planter, a modern birdhouse, and a charming chair for kids. 

Getting Creative with Concrete: An Introduction
Concrete is a simple, beautiful, and very accessible medium with which to explore one’s creativity. The process of creation is just that—a process. It is human nature to influence and improve our environment, and the process generally begins with an idea that fills a need, whether that need is functional or aesthetic. The heart of creative action is problem-solving, and we believe that everyone can do it, although it takes practice. This is exactly what these projects are about—exploring your own methods of problem-solving and making things you love. Everyone can creatively affect their world, and working with colored concrete is a wonderful way to do it.

Once you have determined what it is you want to make, you have to figure out how to make it. There is usually more than one way to go about a project, so take some time at the beginning and weigh the options. Planning is the part most people want to skip—they are eager to jump in, get dirty, and begin making, which is understandable. But spending some time planning can save a lot of pain and frustration in the future. The more time you invest in thinking about the project—where to begin and how to pull it all together—the more original, successful, and enjoyable the project will be. There is always an element of fear here—everyone is afraid of failing. Don’t be! The truth is that you are going to fail in some way, but this is something to be embraced and viewed as a learning experience. There is freedom in recognizing you will fail—you’ll be inspired to push yourself. With every finished project you will probably have a list of things you would do differently next time. Expect this from the beginning and the journey will be more rewarding. As you work on the projects in this book, your successes and failures will become “concrete” markers that will remind you of how far you’ve come and of all the lessons learned and frustrations endured.
 
Lemonade out of Lemons
Working in concrete is an engaging and challenging undertaking. A great aspect of decorative concrete is that it is easy to get started with, but challenging enough to warrant interest for years. The intricacies of the craft separate what we do from an everyday sidewalk. We work within much tighter parameters, which means the odds of failure are much greater. These are the times that test your creative fortitude, but you can continue to assess and respond proactively. In the shop we often talk about making lemonade out of lemons. Some of our most distinctive pieces and techniques are the result of working with concrete that did not behave as expected.

Or maybe we just did something stupid. The bench is a good example. We rushed the demolding process (removing the form) and cracked one of the bench’s legs because the concrete was still too green. So we embraced our now one-legged bench, gave it a prosthetic, and moved on. Some people like the bench better this way. All this is just to say, keep your options open and look for unexpected opportunities.
 
How to Use This Book
Concrete is an amazing medium with which to experiment with color. Not only do we want to challenge and inspire you, we want to give you the understanding to start experimenting on your own, perhaps only using our projects as guidelines or reference. We are all about options because we feel the more options you have in your proverbial tool belt, the more creative and imaginative you can be.

This book is about developing an understanding about color and concrete to a point where you are comfortable creating your own original projects. With only a few exceptions, you can start anywhere in the book—there is no specific order you need to follow other than what keeps you interested. There are several projects that we don’t recommend for beginners, but that’s because of the carpentry skills needed for building the form. Of course, practice makes perfect, and the more forms you build the easier and more successful they will be, so you’ll be able to undertake the complicated forms in no time at all.