Use A Craft Room Staple To Create Budget-Friendly Pavers That'll Boost Curb Appeal

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Adding personality to your backyard can be a tricky task, depending on the size and complexity of your outdoor space. A lot of us have a paved area or patio we use as the ultimate outdoor entertaining destination. It's easy for these areas to become purely functional and lack any character or style. Looking for ideas for your patio pavement? A great way of adding a sense of fun to your patio is with an easy DIY paver project. Creating patterned paving slabs can add interest and texture to your patio. But is there a budget-friendly way of doing this? Good news — yes, there is! Using a Cricut machine, which is known as a craft room staple, allows you to design and print your own stencils, meaning you can customize your paving slabs with a design unique to you. 

For this exciting project, you're going to need a Cricut machine, which you can pick up from Amazon from just $109. Although there is an initial cost, you'll be able to use this machine for lots of future crafting projects, making it a worthwhile purchase. There are also different models available, so make sure to pick one that suits you and your crafting needs. You're also going to require some stencil vinyl to fit into your machine, a weeding tool, and your chosen outdoor paint. 

One of the best things about using a Cricut machine to create a stencil is that it is totally customizable, and you'll be able to achieve a design that can't be bought off the shelves. The premade stencils come in a range of traditional and geometric designs, which are all quite similar in style. The Cricut Design Space software allows you to input any image and make it into a transferrable stencil. You can either design your own from scratch, using a free online platform such as Canva, or there are many pre-made stencil templates you can choose from. Once you've nailed your design, print it out onto stencil vinyl. You'll then need to get rid of the negative space by using a weeding tool to punch out the bits of design that will be painted onto the paving slab.

One side of the stencil vinyl will be sticky, so it can be easily applied onto your paving slab. When it comes to painting on your stencil design, you'll want to choose an exterior concrete paint or an epoxy external paint; these formulas will be the most enduring for outside use and will stand the test of time.