How to Decorate Your Home with Natural Stones

Bringing natural elements, such as stones, into your home has a positive influence on your health and wellness and offers an inexpensive means to create natural, beautiful décor. Whether you choose to incorporate small natural accents, such as a bowl of river rocks on a side table, or to design an entire room with stones as the focal point, you will find that decorating with natural stones is cost effective and simple.

The easiest way to incorporate stones into your décor is to place them as smaller accent pieces within the room. For example, a bowl holding small river rocks or pebbles can be placed on a table or mantle or, alternatively, stones and pebbles can be placed in a hurricane vase as a centerpiece or as a bolder statement in living room décor.

Larger stones can be used alone as decorative accents or on bookshelves or tabletops as bookends, while medium-sized stones are perfect for paperweights or holding cookbooks open to the correct page. When using stones as bookends or on surfaces that might be scratched - such as wood - you may want to attach felt pads to the bottom of the stones to protect your tabletops and shelves.

Small stones and pebbles can be used as a decorative cover for soil in houseplants. They provide a much nicer look than soil alone and, if mixed into the soil as well, will provide better drainage for the health of your plants. This is also particularly helpful is you have animals or small children who like to dig in the dirt of your potted plants, or cats that like to use your houseplants as a litter box.

Small stones and pebbles can also be used as decorative accents in clear vases holding flowers, bowls with floating candles, or surrounding the base of candles on trays or plates used as candle holders.

If your budget allows, and you want to incorporate stones into your décor in a more permanent manner, consider using stones to reface your fireplace and mantel or as a hearth or foundation for a stove heater. Or, use natural stones and pebbles for the walls and floor of your shower for a beautiful, natural shower setting that will massage your feet while you shower. Remember, unless you are quite handy, you may want to bring in a professional for these home improvement projects to ensure that your shower has proper drainage and that stones used to cover walls or a fireplace are anchored properly and will not damage the wall with their weight.

One larger project that I can't wait to try is to place a border around an entire room that is between six inches and one foot away from the wall (depending on the size of the room and usable space) then, after placing protective covering on the floor, fill the space with stones to create a stone border that goes all the way around the room. Potted houseplants, small statues, candle holders or indoor trees can be placed within the border and surrounded by the stones to finish off the look.

How to Decorate with Simple Craft Projects Using Stones and Pebbles

There are a number of craft projects using stones and pebbles that will provide functional, beautiful pieces for use in your home. Many of them can also be tailored for children, which is a great way to allow your kids to have a hand in deciding your home's décor, as well as offering some fun afternoon craft projects to keep little hands busy and create works of art to use at home or give as gifts.

Small stones and pebbles (painted or left natural) can be glued onto picture frames to create nature-inspired décor accents, or to hold a picture of the child and be given as a thoughtful and inexpensive gift to grandparents or other family members.

Magnets for your filing cabinet or refrigerator, or to be given as personalized gifts, are another easy craft project that simply requires gluing magnets onto stones and pebbles that have been left in their natural state or painted to match your décor, or to personalize them.

For more kids' craft projects, you could also have them paint stones to be used as paperweights, bookends or solo decorative accents for family living spaces or their bedrooms.