Kindness Rocks Kickoff

From Seeing to Making

It started with seeing a painted rock in a tree. In December 2025, I spotted an adorable painted rock in a tree while on my daily morning walk, posted about it on Facebook, and quickly learned from a friend that the rock is part of a Kindness Rocks project popularized more than a decade ago. I wrote a previous Substack post about that experience.

Not content merely to observe and enjoy this phenomenon, I aspired to create and place Kindness Rocks of my own around Orlando. Between December and February, I gradually acquired various arts-and-crafts supplies useful for this endeavor. I waited until this past week, during which my sister was visiting us, to inhabit my makeshift makerspace. She and I learned together how to make Kindness Rocks. There was some frustrating trial and error involved, with undesired rock painting being covered with a new coat of background paint, but overall there was more glee than “grrrr…”[1]

Assembled arts-and-crafts supplies for the Kindness Rocks Kickoff. (Photo by Carrie-Ann Biondi, February 2026.)

Having already learned about the basics of these sorts of rocks, I had some idea of how to proceed, but I was kind of learning by the seat of my pants. I was glad that I decided to start by painting the rocks with a solid background color. After that dried, I used acrylic paint to design my first two rocks from images in my mind’s eye.

My first two Kindness Rocks. (Photo by Carrie-Ann Biondi, February 2026.)

While those were drying, I decided to look up more about the whole process. Learning that it’s strongly advised to protect your rock’s painting from the elements with a finish, I ordered nontoxic acrylic varnish. When that arrived the next day (thanks to Amazon), we were able to varnish our first batch of painted rocks.

My sister Amy’s first two Kindness Rocks. (Photo by Carrie-Ann Biondi, February 2026.)

While the varnish on each of our first two rocks was drying, we decided to up our game by looking at photos online for inspiration. In this next round, I looked at a photo of a daisy to figure out how to tackle the petals. This came out better than my butterfly rock did. Had I bothered before painting my first rock to look at an actual butterfly, I would have realized that I should paint a butterfly’s top wings bigger than their bottom one. Ooops! I decided to embrace my blooper and not paint that one over. While this next batch was drying, my sister and I tucked our first batch of Kindness Rocks in Little Free Libraries and the nooks and crannies of trees.

My second batch of Kindness Rocks. (Photo by Carrie-Ann Biondi, February 2026.)

By my fifth rock, I got even bolder and decided to paint a “Florida beach scene.” This was because I planned to surprise my sister with this Kindness Rock as a little gift to remember our arts-and-crafts time. While I’ve still got a lot to learn and future beach scene rocks will have greater technical proficiency, you can have a “first one” only once. Happy birthday, Dear Amy!

My fifth Kindness Rock, which I gifted to Amy. (Photo by Carrie-Ann Biondi, February 2026.)

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[1] You can see a video of our inaugural Kindness Rocks kickoff (along with our Tiny Canvas Project kickoff) at my YouTube channel. I’ll write about Tiny Canvases in a separate post.