Dala Candle Medium enables you to convert acrylic and craft paints into paints that will adhere to tricky surfaces such as plastic, candles, soap, metal, glass and more!

Mix the Candle Medium as per instructions on the bottle or as also explained on the Dala webpage. 

You need 5ml of Candle Medium per 250ml of paint so you will be able to make many Barrows of different colours with this product. We have mainly used green, red, yellow and black in this tutorial but you can use any colours. 

With a sharp spike, make holes in your container for the 2 handles, 2 legs and 2 feet of the Barrow.  You can A hold a nail with pliers and heat the nail to better penetrate the plastic or B you can use a small sharp soldering iron. You will need a total of 6 holes for the wooden rods. Punch a number of holes into the bottom of the container to allow for water seepage.  

We have used disposable chop sticks but you can use wooden skewers. Cut the one set of chop sticks in half and the 4 pieces will be the 2 handles for the Barrow and the other 2 will act as the brace for the wheel. Then cut about 2 x 8cm pieces from the other chop sticks for the feet of the barrow. Insert the various pieces into their respective holes ensuring that each 2 pieces are at  equal lengths protruding outside the plastic container. The handles, wheel braces and legs can now be glued in place on the inside of the container. Ensure your wheel brace have a big enough gap to accept your wheel. 

Once all the wooden supports are in place you can make the wheel for the barrow. For the wheel select a suitable size bottle top. From the lid of the plastic container you are using cut out a square piece of flat plastic just bigger than the bottle top you have selected. Glue this flat piece of plastic to the open side of your selected “wheel.” 

Once the glue is dry cut off the excess plastic leaving you with a round wheel. You can now paint the wheel. Paint on a center circle or glue on a disc or washer as a Hubcap.

You are now ready to start painting your barrow. Paint the plastic container, wait for the paint to dry then paint the wooden legs, handles and wheel brace. To give the tray a metal look we coated it with one layer of Dala Podge. 

You are now ready to complete the barrow by gluing the wheel in place. 

Using the above DIY tutorial you can do a larger wheelbarrow by using an empty 2lt / 1.8Lt ice cream container. 

⦁ The instructions remain the same except that you would need a larger dowel  for the handles, legs and wheel brace so the following is suggested

⦁ Obtain a 900mm x 8mm dowel

⦁ Cut  the dowel  into the following lengths

⦁ For the legs 2 x 80mm 

⦁ For the handles 2 x 220mm

⦁ For the wheel brace 2 x 150mm. 

⦁ You may be able to glue 2 bigger plastic bottle tops together for the wheel. 

This will give you a larger container for bigger plants or more herbs. The red barrow is the 500g container and the green barrow was a 2Lt ice cream container.