Making stone cacti yourself: a handicraft instruction

Often the little things in life are the best. Even with decorations, it is not always the price or the effort you are willing to give that counts. That’s why today I dedicate myself to just such a “small” decoration project, which you can do well in between and still get beautiful, evergreen spring decorations into your room.

Stone cacti can be produced quickly and easily by yourself. For this you need the following:

• medium sized pebbles
• A pot
• Color for the stones, i.e. green and white, yellow or red, etc.
• Some decorative material for the pot
• Brush and a wooden stick
• Decorative stones

You will find a short Amazon shopping list at the end of this article.

Step 1 - Clean the stones

The first step is simple: the pebbles have to be cleaned. The best way to do this is to use water and a brush for scrubbing. This works quite well with a nail brush as well. It is important that no more clay or sand sticks to the stones, otherwise the paint won’t stick well to the stones afterwards.

Let the stones dry well afterwards. You can also put them on the heater or use a hair dryer to help them dry.

Step 2 - Painting stones

The stones are now first primed in the desired basic colour, usually probably green. In principle, however, there is no limit to the imagination. Of course you can also make purple Mars cacti if you feel like it. 😉

When the paint on the stones is dry, we move on to decoration. In my example, you take the wooden stick and dab a spot of paint on the stones with the blunt end. This usually works better with a shashlik skewer than with a small brush. If you have some practice, you can of course also use such a small brush - but in my experience it works faster this way.

You can also apply other patterns to the stones, such as lines, other colors, flowers and so on.

We let the swabs dry long enough again. For the stones in my video or also here in the photos I use “PU Acryl Lack” from the hardware store. The acrylic varnish has the advantage that it is waterproof and shiny.

Basically for inside but also acrylic paint from the painting should work.

Step 3 - Preparing the pots

The pots should also be clean and “beautiful”. For my example I didn’t want to have clay pots in terra-cotta look, but more the Shabby-Chic look. Therefore I dyed them with a sponge and acrylic paint. You could also use chalk paint to emphasize the Shabby look even more. Chalk paint would also have to be sealed for outside. If you don’t want to do it with clay pots at all, you can also use any bowl or maybe the crowns from another upcycling project of mine.

When the paint has dried here too, the pots still have to be filled. In my example project, I now use the leftover sponge from the other projects. But you could have also used packing paper or something similar for filling the pots.

Step 4 - Planting the stone cactuses

When the pots are filled to a good two thirds, you can start planting the stone cacti. To do this, it’s best to start with the biggest stone - I place it in the middle of a small pot. Place it upright in the flower pot and pour a little bit of the decorative stones on it.

Afterwards you place the next cactus stone in the pot, pour it again a little bit and so on. The painted stones should stand relatively firm because of the poured decoration stones. If they always tip over, there are too few decoration stones. You may have to remove some of the filling underneath and thus make room for a thick layer of decorative stones.

Step 5 - Decorate the pots

To put the finishing touches to the whole thing, you can still decorate the pots. Everything is “allowed” here. You can use ribbons, borders, pendants and so on to your heart’s content.

I have also uploaded the whole manual as a short video on YouTube. Maybe you take a look and leave a thumb there.