There are not many places in the UK or, from what I have seen, around Europe where you won’t find old stone water troughs, either in use as ornamental features or for putting decorative plants in around the garden or in village streets. This, then, seemed a nice little project [or a Hint/Tip - EH]. Here is a pic of the mainly finished item, I will then go on to show how I did it:

I do have a problem with objects of an irregular shape - most things I make seem to come out too square and even - so I looked around for a material that would not be too stable or hold its shape too well. A scrap of corrugated card seemed to fit the bill quite well, so an open box shape of approximately 1.25″ by 1″ by 0.5″ was cut out and stuck together, like so:

Once set, a combination of toilet tissue and PVA glue was used to cover it, round the edges and cover the holes in the ends of the card where the corrugations are. This gave a nice irregular shape, as though it might have been carved from a solid block of stone.

Now the next stage still has some room for experimentation. I took the easy route and used Greenscenes textured paint to cover it, the same stuff that I used for the stonework on the building. Once set, this stuff is rock hard and although I havent tried it yet, I think this trough would actually hold water!

I quite like the look of it, but I feel it has a bit too coarse a texture for a trough that could be hundreds of years old. I did apply the paint with a paintbrush, but with hindsight, think laying it on with a spatula or similar tool, might have worked better, maybe I will try another later.

Thinking of other materials for those who can’t get the Greenscene paint easily, I think it should be possible to make up something similar from ingredients we already have. A mixture of plaster, PVA or white glue and latex/emulsion paint, should give a similar result, I would think, maybe even Papier Maché could work.

I’ve tried a few experiments with the painting of the troughs and here are the results:

1. The original as described above.
2. Using the Greenscene textured paint again, but applied with plastic toothpic instead of a brush. As I had hoped, this gives a slightly smoother finish, but still enough texture to create a few shadows.
3. As 2 above and then a wash of green poster paint to represent algae/moss growing on it. I tried green weathering powder first, but this didn’t work very well - I think the surface was too rough for it to stick to properly. This one is mounted on some bricks from http://www.richardstacey.com/
4. Again using the greenscene paint, but this time diluted with water and the courser particles allowed to settle. Not really happy with this one, it has lost some of the solid look to it and although not important, is nowhere near as tough. The surface is smoother, which I was after, but I think more care is needed to get the structual shape right first, before applying the paint, which all takes time, I’m not sure the end result is worth the extra time.
5. Finally, a different finish on this one. I made up a slurry of papier mache, white glue and latex/emulsion paint. This was then applied with a toothpic and pushed and prodded into place. This one took ages to do and getting a reasonably even coverage without any gaps took a bit of practice. The end result though is pretty good. I think using plaster instead of the papier maché might have produced a better mix.

The troughs have proved ideal for playing around with different coatings. I have been trying to get a formula which comes close to the Greenscenes textured paint and think I have now come close. One of the drawbacks of the Greenscenes stuff - apart from a lack of worldwide availability - is that it does have a coarser texture than is needed for all applications. I have, therefore, been working on doing something finer as can be seen in this photo:

These are slightly bigger than the ones I did before. As I have been doing so many (trying different coatings) making up the boxes became a bit of a chore so I raided my collection of reject wagon bodies. Getting the coatings to stick to resin worked surprisingly well and they are incredibly strong once set - I stood on these two with all my weight and it didn’t even mark them, not sure I would recommend it though [It might work if you’re as light as Steve … but I’ll not be trying it - EH]. To the right you will see that I first coated the resin in a slurry of paint, pva glue and a bit of fine grit, to give the coating something to stick to, it worked perfectly.

[This tip originally appeared in the GnATTERbox]