In the garden plot, people often realize their fantasies or what they saw during their travels, ideas they saw on the Internet on various sites, and then they build rock gardens, garden sculpture, original flowerpots for flowers, wooden crafts, garden scarecrows and much more. This gives summer cottage uniqueness makes it special. It is useful to involve children and grandchildren in such activities; they really like to take part in creativity and decorating the garden.
One of the types of such crafts on the site is the construction of mini castles from natural materials, most often from small stones, river pebbles, coarse gravel. This is a very exciting activity. You need to start building such a castle out of stone by choosing a suitable place on the site. It is convenient to place it near a children's playground, for example, or near a recreation area for the whole family. An area of 1-2 square meters is suitable for this. square meters depending on the intention.
It is advisable to draw a sketch of the future on paper to scale, determine how many towers it is planned to build, whether they will be connected by a fortress wall, an arch, and sometimes they make a small moat around the castle through which a bridge is built. It is useful to look in books or on the Internet for photographs of real or miniature castles when developing your castle project.
Next you need to take care of building materials, prepare cement and sand or buy ready-made cement-sand mixture For street work. Then bring a sufficient number of stones for construction, and you will need a lot of them, think about what to make the roof, windows and doors in the castle from. If there is a river or sea, then you can collect medium-sized round pebbles. Large gravel made from granite, limestone, and sandstone is suitable. The main thing is that the stones are of the same type and approximately the same size.
When everything you need is prepared, you can begin building a mini castle. The easiest way to build a castle is from three rounded towers. For this they use old metal pipes with a diameter of 10-15 cm, which are dug into the ground and filled with cement for stability. You can take sections of asbestos-cement pipes; they are also suitable for constructing towers. It is better to make towers of different heights. Then, starting from the bottom of the pipes, they make a masonry of stones based on cement mortar, attaching them sequentially one after another.
At the height at which the windows in the tower are planned, the laying of stones is stopped, plastic bottles of brown or green are taken, and a cylinder is cut out of them suitable size, paint a window with a frame on it, cut the cylinder vertically on the side opposite to the window, place it on the pipe, and continue laying stones to the very top of the pipe. It turns out to be a window in the castle tower.
Then you need to make a roof for the tower. For these purposes you can use various materials, which will be at hand. It is convenient to make it from thin tin, bending it in the shape of a cone, painting it oil paint. You can cut out “tiles” from linoleum and nail them to a wooden frame. Another option for making a roof is to cover a cone of cement mortar with rectangular pieces ceramic tiles, it also looks like tiles.
When the castle towers are ready, they begin to build walls that will connect them, or make a fortress wall around the towers. An arch of stones is often built in front of the entrance. The entire interior of the castle is carefully covered with fine gravel, after laying non-woven material under it to prevent the growth of weeds. If desired, you can increase the territory of the castle by building new towers, walls, arches, bridges. To make the castle more authentic, they add figures of gnomes, knights, princesses, decorate the walls with images of dragons, hang flags and pennants.
It is important to fit such a castle harmoniously into the garden plot. If the castle acts as an independent ensemble, then low flowers or ornamental grasses are planted next to it, which will give it more naturalness. Moreover, such flower arrangements can be changed annually, then the mini castle will look different all the time. Low but spectacular annual flowers are suitable for this purpose, for example, pansies(violas), thin-leaved and rejected marigolds, small petals, daisies, primroses. Among the perennials used are dwarf hostas, alpine aster, and Carpathian bellflower.
Sometimes a mini castle made of stones simply serves as a frame for a small flower bed, inside of which annual flowers are planted. This original flowerbed in the shape of a castle will decorate the lawn or front area of the garden. Flowers are planted inside the fortress wall of the castle, selecting not too tall compact forms of low-growing annuals.
Everyone wants to make their site original and special. But how to do this? Here various decorative figures will come to the rescue, but they require costs.
Therefore, you can build a castle with your own hands on the site. This will not be a problem for those who do at least something with their own hands. In addition, this does not require special expenses.
Decorations for the site
To decorate its territory now exists many options:
- Entire zoos are literally built from old tires. There are swans, cats, giraffes and elephants.
- You can make flower beds and flower beds from unusable logs and stones.
- From polyurethane foam and bottles you can create figurines for the garden.
- And if you use cement and have some skills in working with it, you can create simply magnificent sculptures that will decorate any area.
You can also build a castle with your own hands from scrap materials or even build a whole kingdom that will delight not only children, but also adults. This building will add mystery to the garden, and to make it look more alive, you can make a rock garden or rock garden.
To obtain a more durable and long-lasting structure, you should use cement-sand mixture. For the composition it is better to use 2 parts sand and 1 part cement. Before starting, it is advisable to dry the sand - the drier it is, the easier it will be to sift and subsequently use.
Most often, castles turn out to be quite large in size, and besides, their construction is a little difficult. challenging task. To deal with this, you can try to line up some parts separately, after which they can be easily assembled into in the right place like from cubes. Here's how to make your own castle.
Construction for building a castle
To build a tower from an iron sheet, you need to roll up a cylinder of the required size and fix it. It must be fixed so that it can be easily disassembled after use. To reduce solution consumption A bottle or jar should be placed inside the cylinder, but it must be taken into account that the thickness of the solution around the ballast should be about 5 cm.
When pouring the solution inside, make sure it is thick. After which it needs to be allowed to harden for several hours so that the formwork does not crumble when removed.
The height of the formwork should be chosen in this way: it should be approximately equal to the tower; if it is smaller, it should be disassembled and assembled above the already set part.
You can cut the solution after it has set. To perform such work, the following tools are used:
- chisel;
- screwdriver;
- scalpel or similar blade;
- blade from a hacksaw for metal;
- strips of tin that will help form the elements of the castle.
A castle made of simple cylindrical shapes will look a little boring, to avoid this you should experiment and use a chisel to imitate stonework, chips or cracks at the bottom of the castle to give the castle the effect of antiquity. Using a knife you can make windows and loopholes.
The roof is constructed from tin cones, and they can also be used as a mold for mortar. The roof should be knocked out of the mold only after the solution has reliably hardened.
Making walls
To make walls, a rectangle of the required size is assembled from boards, after which it is placed on a flat surface, which is previously covered with a piece of film or roofing felt. The solution is poured into the resulting frame. To make a window or door in the wall, you should pre-position the frames in the desired location.
After the solution has been poured to the desired height, bottom part You can insert stones or crushed stone to create a kind of imitation of the foundation, or using a knife, draw grooves - characteristic gaps between the foundation stones.
When the solution has hardened, the frame is removed and, if required, details are added: windows, loopholes, etc. After this, the walls are left to dry for another day.
It is better to choose a sunny day to build a castle.. It is best to place it on a hill, which can be a pile of stones. To ensure that the walls stand securely, a foundation is built for them, on which a thin layer of cement is then applied. And only after that is it worth installing the walls. They can also be strengthened in another way, for example, the internal cavity is filled with stone, rubble or mortar.
Since simple concrete castles look gray and dull, many people paint them. For this they use acrylic paint. This decorative element It will become a real decoration of the garden, and both children and adults will be happy with it.
How to make your plot or garden unique - this is the dream of many owners. Many people love to decorate their own estate, dacha, or yard, but not everyone has extra money that could be spent on decorative figures. But this is not a problem for those who at least know how to do something with their own hands.
It doesn’t even require any special expenses.
For example, a fairy-tale kingdom on the garden site will be a good gift for both small and adult dreamers.
Even a mini-castle built at the dacha will add mystery to the area.
Mini-castles for the yard or garden are quite large in volume, and building it completely is a little difficult.
You can try to make some parts of the castle separately, so that later in any part of the garden or at the dacha you can assemble it from ready-made elements, like from cubes.
An example of a design for building a castle in a country house
easy to disassemble. To reduce solution consumption, cans or bottles can be placed inside the cylinder, but the thickness of the solution around the ballast must be at least 5 cm.
The solution for pouring should be thick enough. It must be given several hours to set to such a state that the formwork does not crumble when removed. The height of the cylindrical formwork must be selected as follows: it should be approximately equal to the height of the tower; with a smaller size, the formwork will need to be disassembled and assembled slightly higher than the already set lower part.
Making a castle for your dacha is easy if you have a pair of “golden hands”.
The main material is sand and cement for the longevity of the composition. 2 parts sand and 1 part cement.
Elements of a standard design.
Let's start with the turrets.
A cylinder of the required radius is rolled up from a sheet of iron (mine is about 2-30 cm). The cylinder is fixed with wire or self-tapping screws
Anything can be placed inside the cylinder - bottles, cans - to reduce the consumption of the solution, but the thickness to the ballast should be at least 5 cm. Fill with a thick solution.
We give it several hours to set to such a state that when removing the formwork it does not crumble. 
We immediately begin to cut the damp, slightly set solution.
The cutting technology is the same as that of sandboxes. For cutting, a set of tools is used that is available to everyone.
Don’t forget to make windows, loopholes, using a knife to dig out the required recess.
Fill the mold with the solution and after partial setting, carefully remove the formwork cylinder and make the required number of windows, teeth - as your imagination dictates. 
The roof can be made from tin cones; you can also use this tin cone as a mold for pouring mortar. After complete setting, carefully knock our roof out of the mold. Don't forget that we are still preparing individual elements of the castle. We'll put everything together later.
Let's start building the walls. Our walls will be either fortress (1) or a building element (2).
There is no difference in their production.
We assemble a rectangle of the required size from boards 5 cm wide. We place it on a flat surface, having previously placed either a film or a piece of roofing felt so that the solution poured later is not absorbed.
You can place a metal arch in this frame - this will be a door or gate. Pour the solution into the frame. Where no windows or doors are planned, you can add crushed stones or broken bricks to the bottom to save mortar.
After the solution is poured to the desired height, you can take nice crushed stones and stick them into the base of the foundation so that their flat edges protrude above the general plane of the solution by about 5 mm.
Then loopholes and windows are made. Draw everything your imagination tells you. To remove the remaining solution, I use a soft brush (you’ve probably seen how archaeologists work in the movies). In the end, you will be left with something like the following on your desk.
Leave the finished walls on the table for about a day. When the foundation is prepared, we begin assembly.
First we install on cement mortar, previously applied to the foundation, for example tower No. 1. We attach wall No. 1 to the tower using mortar. Then we install tower No. 2.
The castle is already beginning to emerge. You are filled with excitement. Next, add wall No. 2 and finish by installing tower No. 3.
Assembly diagram:
Once this structure has set, form a gable roof over the building.
This is how you can make a complex castle from the main basic elements, changing them slightly depending on your imagination - like this, for example.
Or a very simple one:
DIY garden crafts can bring you great pleasure. Choose the figure that best suits your character and the design of your garden. Let's try to make garden figurines from cement with our own hands. The process, surprisingly, is not as complicated as it seems. But the result is truly surprising!
See what beautiful flower containers you can make from cement mortar and an old rag. This is truly crafts made from scrap materials!
Decorative openwork ball made of cement.
To work, we need a cement solution - mix a thick solution of 1 part sand, 1 part cement.
We immerse a rope in the solution; these can also be strips of old t-shirt etc. Let's inflate balloon, we prepare a stand for it where it will dry. This could be a regular bucket. 
We wrap the ball with a rope in cement mortar.
After the solution has dried, use a needle to blow off the ball. All! Our garden art object is ready. Can be painted if desired.
Original crafts for the garden made of cement.
Agree, it looks like dragon eggs)) We will make this from cement.
We take it, still the same balloon and cover it with cement mortar. Here you can add a tablespoon of gypsum to the solution, but you need to work quickly.
After the solution has dried, remove the ball and paint inner part eggs. Can be used as Easter decor at the dacha - by making it flower arrangement from primroses.
Crafts for the garden. DIY garden gnomes made of cement.
These cute garden gnomes are also very easy to make.
For the gnome we need cement, a metal rod, stocking and rope. We pour the cement solution into the stocking, and insert metal reinforcement into it for strength. By twisting the rope, we form noses and legs. Let's not forget about the beard - this is an additional piece of material under the gnome's nose. Hang the gnome by the top of the cap and leave to dry.
When the cement has dried, remove the gnome and polish the top with a more liquid solution of cement and gypsum. We are waiting for the gnome to dry and we can tint or paint it. Cute, aren't they?
Garden fountain with leaves.
We will not talk about the principles of creating a fountain in the country. This is the topic of a separate article, and you can read about it in detail here. We will make leaves from cement.
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We need a fairly large sheet, and with the help of cement, we form a copy of it.
After drying, the sheet can be worked out in more detail and painted.
And you will become, almost free of charge, the owner of such a beautiful fountain.
Original do-it-yourself flower beds.
Are you not a sculptor at all? But believe me, you can make these creative flower containers.
We need plastic container, foam plastic, reinforcing mesh. We make a cement solution by adding a spoonful of gypsum directly into the palm with the solution and thus form our “sculpture”
But not all of us are fans of modern abstract art. But you can easily make garden crafts in a classic style.
But, because You are not a sculptor yet, you need a template - it could very well be an old doll.
Because If this is not just a decorative garden figurine, but a flower bed in the shape of a girl’s head, then the top part needs to be cut off.
Then the head is painted. To add texture, the template is first painted with dark gray paint. Allow to dry and apply a layer of lighter paint. After drying, apply a layer of even lighter paint with light strokes.
This is a very simple process, and all the examples of this style that you see in the article were made by teenagers in a craft class.
Beautiful crafts for the garden. DIY garden figurines.
For those who liked the process of making crafts from concrete, we will also tell you a simply stunning technique for creating garden figurines.
Yes, we will need the old doll again!
First, we strengthen the doll using hot glue and a bamboo sushi stick on a heavy stand. By the way, we can also make it from cement. We cut out angel wings from foam plastic and attach them to the doll with hot glue. Let's give the doll a new dress and, with the help of strokes of hot glue, create a more interesting texture on the wings and hair.
We coat our template with a solution of cement and gypsum. Let's paint.
Now, with the help of old toys, you can make almost any garden figurine yourself.
Cat flower bed.
This cute flowerbed cat is made from a plastic bottle and cement. 
We will need: cement, sand, plaster, water, large plastic bottle, wire, paint, wooden slats, varnish. 
The owner of this cat, Natasha Koneva, will tell us how to make such a funny figurine with her own hands. Trimming plastic bottle- it is this container that will be our flower garden. To prevent the cement from slipping off the plastic, we tightly wrap it with wire. Knock down from slats wooden frame. We attach our plastic container to it. 
Mix the cement mortar with the consistency of thick sour cream at the rate of 1 part sand, 1 part cement. We will add gypsum only to the finished portion that we have in our hand, because... the solution with gypsum hardens instantly. We work in rubber gloves. 
Take a handful of solution in your hand and add a tablespoon of gypsum to it. Knead it in your hands, roll it into a sausage and attach it to the frame. So, step by step, we apply portions of the solution on top of each other, creating the necessary bulges and smoothing the surface. 
We sculpt our cat’s face from small balls of solution in much the same way as we sculpted from plasticine in childhood. In order to small details held on better; before attaching them to the body, we lubricate the surface of the figure with water. 
With a damp hand we polish the surface of our garden figurine. To dry, cover the figurine with cellophane for 3-4 days. On the first day, the figurine must be periodically additionally moistened with water. After drying, sand the surface with sandpaper. 
You can paint such a figurine water-based paint, enamel, car paints. After painting, coat the surface with varnish. For the winter, the garden figurine must be removed from the street, because... It may crack due to frost. You might also want to get yourself such a wonderful cat. 
The great thing about cement figurines is that they are cheap to make compared to metal or wood garden figurines. You can start with simple crafts for the garden, which can be no less interesting than some particularly complex ones. You can combine cement with other materials. - for the face of this little garden fairy " Ladybug"Took the head of an old doll. 