When you want to bring beauty and fun to your backyard on even a tiny budget, pick up a bag of ready mix concrete. Making amazing additions, like pots, stepping stones, or outdoor art is possible when you do a little planning and add ready mix concrete to the equation. With a ubiquitous material that's found everywhere from industrial uses to infrastructure, it can sometimes be easy to overlook the potential of concrete for fun DIY outdoor projects. So whether you're a parent looking for a memorable project to do with your kids or if you're just a kid at heart, here's how you can make your outdoors more amazing with ready mix concrete.

Make It Personal

Making handmade stepping stones or garden plaques is a great way to bring something durable and new outside, while still giving you a blank canvas to capture and create awesome memories. Stepping stone projects can be a great and simple project that parents can do with kids, and beyond ready mix concrete, you only need a simple, flat pan or dish, and some imagination. Stepping stones can be decorated with imprints, including palm, paw, leaf, or textural impressions that can last a lifetime, as well as embedded baubles that will sparkle in the sun.

Try A Modern Spin On Utility

If you've already created stepping stones, or want to try something more modern and sophisticated for your outdoor areas, consider making larger, utility items using concrete. Wishing bowls, planters, and animal feeders can all be created by using simple pots, pans, and common jugs, jars, and other containers that you may be getting rid of. Commercially-available concrete items are a staple in home and garden centers, but their higher prices and heavy weight make them a poor choice for most homeowners. So instead of buying something made from concrete, consider trying to make something yourself. Though glass has to be broken after the concrete has set, plastics, metals, and even homemade forms, like ones created in sand, can be the perfect way to create something novel and unique for your outdoors. And just like stepping stones, these creations can either include embedded material, for enhanced color and texture, dye additives, for a beautiful pop of color, or imprints, so you'll almost never find another one like it.

Try Your Hand At Sculpture

Though common household goods can provide the perfect backbone for a planter, bowl, or feeder, you may also want to think outside the container and try sculpting with ready mix concrete. From the abstract to the replica, concrete sculpting depends on having the right mold and something interesting from which to make an impression. If you have a doll, statue, or sculpture, try making an impression in a container filled with sand, of which you can fill later with ready mix. Though you'll probably only be able to do a half of an object at a time, the more you work with concrete, the more you'll be able to do with the material.

For more information, talk to a concrete professional like Van Doren Red-E-Mix.