Happy Stones

You might have found this page because you found a Happy Stone that I left behind and you might also have wondered what this was all about.

What are Happy Stones?
Happy Stones are small painted stones that the artists themselves have placed somewhere in public to give a smile to the finder.
The finder can decide to keep the little stone, or to place it somewhere else in public so that someone else can find it and in this case, to create even more smiles 🙂
So, can you keep it? You sure can!

Where can you find these stones?
This obviously depends on where the artists are deciding to leave a Happy Stone.
I am from The Netherlands and it’s a big thing there right now (2021). So I thought it would be nice to spread the happiness to Denmark.
For now you will probably find my Happy Stones in Nord Sjælland, Danmark.

So, spread the joy and also start making your own Happy Stones!
All you need are nice smooth stones and some acryllic paint/acryllic paint markers/maybe some gesso as primer/some acrylic lacquer to give it a nice finish and make your artwork last longer.
There are many websites that show you how to do this, Google is your friend 🙂

If you found one of my Happy Stones, you can leave me a message if you want. You can do that on this page: Happy Stones Denmark Facebook

Enjoy!

I will try to make my stones in series, so that I can leave some stones out in public that have a connection to each other.
My first series wase “Mr. Men”, see some examples in the gallery below. This series was placed outside on May 21st.
This complete series is made on stones that I have taken from Killiney beach in Ireland (just South of Dublin). Originally I had painted runes on them, to have a Rune set, but never used them.
I am still getting used to the paint and markers.
I am quite good with pencils and pastels, but this is totally different and I have some trouble finding out what markers work well together with my varnish…so I am sorry that some of my stones look a bit sucky 🙂

Extra info Mr. Cool and Mr.Cheerful: the backside glows in the dark 🙂

The first Happy Stone I left was this one, it was found right after I moved it to a more visible spot:

The next one was this one. Again, some things went wrong during painting, so yeah…not the prettiest one, but I think you can recognise who this is. The candlelight actually glows in the dark 🙂

October 9, 2021 I have put some of my Halloween stones out in Nivå. Hopefully some people enjoyed finding them 🙂

I placed Halloween stones out daily in October 2021, with last day October 31st 2021.
I placed most in and around Nivå, some in Copenhagen, Kokkedal and Hørsholm and in the train from Helsingør to Malmö.

Update May 2023:
Haven’t updated much as we moved to an other house in 2022 and we have done a lot of work in and around the house. We moved to Gribskov kommune in Denmark.

I have in the meanwhile painted some stones, just to be ready for the Winter season of 2023.
I already have several random stones, Halloween stones, winter stones and Christmas stones ready. I am planning to paint many more.
Hopefully by Summer I have some to lay out around Gribskov/Copenhagen.

Update November 2023:
I have not had a focus on painting stones at all this year. I did paint some, but have not laid out any.
I had a lot of Halloween stones, but have not put them outside, so we will have a lot of these next year 🙂
I have some for Christmas and hope to lay out a few in The Netherlands and also here in Denmark before Christmas.
Hopefully I will have some time to paint a few more for Christmas. I have stones ready with ground paint on them, ready to paint.

Update November 2024:
I have placed a lot of Halloween stones outside in Græsted and in the local train and S-train between Græsted and Hillerød and between Hillerød and Copenhagen.
I also painted a slate stone (a former roof panel of the Græsted station building) which I used in front of the house during Halloween. Planning to make one more for Christmas.

Under here I will share my painted stones.

Happy Stones from 2021:

And the new ones for 2023: