Creating Story Stones
- Ratna Kusuma Halim
- Dec 10, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 27
11 years ago, I renovated my turtle pond.
My small rectangle pond widened into a much bigger one with the addition of a mini garden for more basking space. To avoid the turtles dirtying the pond quickly, I layered the garden with white stones instead of soil or sand.
The white stones stole my attention. I took hold of them and turned them around in the palm of my hand. The smooth surface of the stones calls me to start drawing and painting on them...
With only my daughter's leftover acrylic paints and a marker pen, I created my very first story stones! I started with painting on big stones, just like the ones I have in my mini garden. It wasn't too difficult as a lot of big stones have wide surfaces, though it took quite some time to get used to drawing and painting details on slightly curvy rock surfaces!
As I painted more stones, I found out that painted stones are actually a thing! They're called Story Stones and could be used as an open-ended toy to create stories. This can help spark creativity and imagination in children (adults too) as they sort and order the stones to create any story they wanted. Later on, I would also learn that Story Stones can also help develop language skills.
However, big stones with the size of half a palm could hurt when accidently dropped onto toes :D
So I bought a sack of small stones (measuring around 1 cm each) to create my Story Stones, which wouldn't hurt much if a bunch are dropped on toes. This feat, however, proved to be an extremely difficult task. They barely have smooth, flat surfaces to paint on, there's little space to hold the stones still without smudging the paint, the paintings have shrunk into minuscule sizes...
However, with so much effort and loads of practise, I finally managed to create tiny Story Stones! It takes a lot of steps to create a set of Story Stones. The very first step is to find stones suitable for painting (the stones shouldn't roll so easily, have any cracks, or sharp edges) and wash them. Next, I draw with pencil, which is the longest step because I have to adapt with each and every unique stone shape. After that, I paint the stones one color at a time. If a drawing needs red paint, then I'll also paint other stones that need red color. Once the paint is dry, I line the drawings with marker pen and varnish them. Drying the varnish also takes up a lot of time (up until several days)!
And the results are...
Small enough to fit into a small pouch and light enough to be brought around, these tiny Story Stones could be an alternative to gadgets. Instead of sticking childrens' faces onto a screen, they could pretend play and/or create stories with the stones and hone their creativity.
After some time, I began selling them on Facebook. Portable, cute, and educational, it turns out that people were quite enthusiastic about it! There's barely anything like Story Stones in Indonesia, especially small portable ones. Many small pouches of Story Stones traveled a long way, such as to Sulawesi, Singapore, and Japan!
One particular touching moment was when these small pouches of Story Stones reached a neurodivergent child. This was also when I learned that Story Stones could be used to develop language skills. Encouraged to describe the characters/objects on the stones and form sentences to connect them into stories, the child started advancing his vocabulary and speaking!
Other than honing creativity and developing language skills, these cool, small, smooth Story Stones are also great sensory objects (especially for those with sensory problems). While forming a set for customers, my daughter would take her time as she enjoys looking over the pile of colorful stones and handle the soothing stones among her hands.
How can one start playing with Story Stones? Well, I would usually leave them up to the person on how they want to play with them. However, here are some ideas (fyi, 1 pouch is made up of 10 stones, with 5 subjects and 5 objects)
Pull a stone one at a time. After each pull, you have to create/continue the story with the character/object you've pulled out. Giving each stone an individual story is also fine!
For the child that doesn't like surprises, they can also pour out all the stones in the pouch and arrange them in the order they want the story to go. Adding a background or other supporting characters/objects could make the story more fun!
Another fun way you can use Story Stones are to combine them with Story Starters, which you could find here. Most of the Story Starters have an illustration and an opening sentence and you can continue the story with Story Stones! I made a stop motion combining both, which you can find in my Instagram!
My Story Stones are available in Shopee. I'm currently only shipping to Asian countries, so if Shopee isn't availble in your country, do send me a chat!
Have fun playing with them!
Comments