Rocks! For holiday gifts! When I started painting rocks my snis teased me that I was going to give everyone rocks for Christmas and I was like, ha, why would anyone want those?! But here we are… Christina (aka Snister/Snistina/Snis) was right again! As a reminder you can see all my rocks on Instagram if you want at kimhidestherocks.

I got the idea in my head to paint my Dad’s ’39 Chevy Coupe, then when I liked how that turned out, I made a few more of his cars.

I think the Coupe turned out best! I’m really proud of it, and was the most invested in it, and was devastated when I thought I ruined with varnish. The first coat left streaks across it (see below), and you have to wait three hours between coats, and it was killing me to see if the second coat fixed it. It did. Phew. My poor snis had to listen to me whine about it for most of those three hours. Love you snis!

All of these photos except the one above are pre-varnish. I became a bit obsessed with varnishing them so they would not scratch each other.

My older bro suggested I draw the ’26 Ford Model T (they have a ’15 too) because it would be easy. It actually was EXCEPT FOR THOSE FREAKING WHEELS FML. The wheels were the most difficult part of every rock. (And this is actually my mom’s car oops…)

This is the Jeep I will inherit*, a ’67 Kaiser Jeep M715. That’s me driving it with a couple of nephews along for the ride at my parent’s 40th anniversary party in the photo above! It suits me, right?

My older brother was helping me so much with photos that I wanted to make him and his wife one too, and this one is my second favorite – his ’52 Ford F1 Pickup with their dog Chevy on it! (A Chevy on a Ford! Tee hee!)

And I knew my mom would like to have one so I made one of her ’88 Ford Festiva (that she won). She opened this before my dad opened his, and my dad fell back on the couch laughing when he saw it. Ha ha ha.

And finally! Our friend Steve (Gina’s husband) sold his Alfa Romeo this summer, so we made this rock as a memento for him for his birthday last week. Steven painted the marker lights (orange-ish lights in the front),

and he also taped the entire background of the rock (see below) so we could use glossy sealant (which looks so much better in person that in the photo above). When you use glossy sealant, and some mattes, they make the natural background of the rock darker, and I don’t like that look for my work right now, so the only way I could think of to make only the car glossy was to tape out the background of the rock. And it worked!

I really enjoyed making all of these. And don’t be too impressed – I did not 100% free hand these! I printed images of the rocks to scale then traced them on, then poked through that image to mark exactly where certain details went, then I drew the rest on, then colored it in. Below you can see the M715 paper with holes punched through, and my outline and the start of the paint below.

*this may not be a factual statement