 Hi, this is Mary from Front porch Ideas and more. And today, Dave and I are making a special stepping stone for a very dear friend of ours. And what we wanted to include in the stepping stone is things that are very meaningful to her. So just take a look here real quick. We're starting out with a mold. You might even have one of these for making a stepping stone before. This is a mold and we put some chicken wire in it to reinforce the concrete when we pour it in here. And then we purchased some mosaic stained glass from Hobby Lobby. And it has all different colors and different shapes of stained glass. And the very special things that we bought were things that mean a lot to our friend. So our friend is into horses and her and her husband into boating. And so we bought some horses and we got an anchor that we're putting in there because they loved boating. And we also put their initials in with a heart in the middle and a little angel over them. And then I just added some of the stained glass in the colorful pattern around the special momentos. So the next step is we're going to show you about putting the concrete into the mold and then putting these momentos into the concrete. And one thing I wanted to mention is that Dave added some wire to each of the momentos so that it reinforces it into the concrete and it doesn't pull out easily. So stay with us and we'll show you the next step. Dave used his wheelbarrow to mix up the concrete and he just followed the instructions on the package. So Dave added some concrete to the bottom of the mold and then you put the chicken wire on top and then he's going to add some more concrete. And then it's just a matter of leveling it out before we start adding the pretty stones and the momentos that we have. So looking pretty good Dave. Yep, looks great. Alright. Looks great. Great. We added our momentos to the concrete first starting with the largest items. So we put in the the wrench and the horseshoes and the helm and then we also put in the initials with the heart in between and got those just exactly where we wanted them. And then we started putting the pretty stones around all of the momentos and just laid them on the top of the wet concrete. As it got further along, we sometimes had to use a screwdriver if if something would fall below the concrete a little bit too much. So we used a screwdriver to adjust it. So you have to kind of work with it a little bit. Some of the items might go under the concrete just a little bit too much. So it's just a matter of lifting them up a little bit with the screwdriver. And then as after we got everything placed, then what I did is I used the screwdriver and just slightly tapped on each piece to make sure that it was down enough in the concrete so that when it dried that it was firmly implanted in there. And so now that everything is placed in the wet concrete, just the way that we like, it's time to be patient and let the stone dry. And we waited a full 24 hours before we took the stone out of the mold. So I would caution you to be patient and not pop it out too soon because the weight will be worth it. The stone popped out from the mold very easily. We just turned it upside down and put it on a towel. And it didn't stick to the stone to the mold whatsoever. So now the top of it has a little bit of, oh I guess you call concrete dust or crumbs on it. So I brought my hairdryer outside and I'm blowing it off. And then I'm going to use a toothbrush and actually just scrub the the momentals a little bit to remove any of that little bit of grind that's on there. So I'm just using the brush to gently go across each of the stones and get rid of the little bit of residue that was left from the drying of the concrete. I'm using a soft toothbrush and then I think you could actually just put some water on a paper towel or a little window cleaner or diswashing liquid to shine up the stones. Once this is really dry you could probably spray it with the hose because of course it's going to be sitting outside anyhow. And then when I'm all done with this I'm going to use my blow dryer again and just blow away the residue. But everything's set in here really well because what we did at the very end when we were putting the decorations inside of the concrete, we pushed them down a good amount. There's just a little bit that's above the surface but we wanted to make sure that they were firmly embedded in the concrete. And it looks like we did a pretty good job of that along with putting some wire on the larger pieces. So this is going to be a very nice gift to give to our friend. We turned the stone upside down to let it dry for a few more hours on the other side. As you can see it's really shiny and smooth on the bottom and it turned out wonderfully. So we're going to let it dry before we give it to our friend. Just a little bit more. The finished stone speaks for itself. It turned out really well and we're glad that we waited plenty of time for it to dry while. Our friend really really loves it. We've given it to her and here are some pictures that we took of it in her garden. Thank you for watching. You