Do-It-Yourself Concrete Art Ideas
Direct Colors has everything you need for small concrete projects like garden décor, statuary, cultured stone and more.
Create beautiful colors and artistic creations with Deco Gel gelled acid stain, concrete acid stain or concrete pigment.
Visit the customer photo gallery for inspiration and give our customer service technicians a call!
We can help you make almost any project idea a reality any time of the year! Concrete decor is also a wonderful unfinished gift for the “crafty” person in your life.
Get “Concrete Creative” with Direct Colors!
Bob in California emailed us photos with a description of his project. Folks living in especially arid climates should pay particular attention his suggestions. “Thanks for a fine product and great instructions. It was a lot of hard work but the results are fine and the DCI floor wax and polish really made it “pop”. We are happy with the project and the economy of covering 1250 feet of floor space for only about $400. Our total cost was a bit more than 50 cents per square foot!”
“Due to the low humidity, spreading the sealer with the pad is the best way. It took a day for prep and stain, a day for neutralizing and washing, and another day for more washing and first seal coat. The first seal coat used half the 5 gallon container as the concrete really soaked it in but the second coat probably did not use more than a half gallon. I found a shop vacuum extremely useful in gathering up the water when cleaning the floor. A floor squeegee ($5) came in handy for pushing the water on the floor.”
Direct Colors manufactures one of the most durable, easy-to-work with 
DCI Concrete Overlay can be hand-troweled smooth with a magic trowel, stamped or textured. If you have a heavily stained, slightly damaged or generally unattractive concrete slab – indoors or out – you’d like to start over with, this is the product. You don’t have to be an expert to overlay a concrete floor, just a little bit handy. Give us a call for advice on your next project and we’ll provide all the technical assistance you’ll need to get the job done right yourself!
Adding either 
For poured-in-place countertops after pouring and floating, broadcast the desired amount of aggregate onto the surface and trowel in. After waiting for the necessary curing period, begin polishing with a 100-grit pad to expose the aggregate and continue working the surface with up to a 3000-grit pad for the smoothest possible appearance.
A manageable sized section at a time was worked, blending the next section in as the work progressed. All 4 colors were in their own sprayer and used concurrently. First the concrete was dampened with water. Then Desert Amber was used as a base color. On top of that, Cola and English Red were applied making sure to duplicate the graining pattern like that in marble and always blending with the next section to continue the look. Sea Grass was added as a highlighter to the pattern. Leaving areas with the Desert Amber exposed is important to the look. A good amount of all the colors was used, thoroughly saturating the concrete with the stain. This ensures you get enough color down, and helps the colors flow better. It’s not important to have an exact idea of how the whole project will look in the end, but you should have a general idea of how the graining pattern should flow. It’s difficult to imagine the final version anyway, because the actual color of the stain is one color going on and turns to the final color later. 
On this project, the porch was installed when the house was built and has a slight drain angle away from the foundation. This was used to help determine which way the graining stripes should go and the overall pattern. You can run water on the concrete and watch the flow pattern to decide how to use that to your advantage. If you do this immediately before staining, you may have to squeegee off the excess water. The final look is a sheer stain color as opposed to a painted look. Any imperfections or major stains on the concrete might show through. These things can be worked into the overall design, if needed.
