Cardboard Cactus

With the stay-at-home order, I can’t satisfy my need to plant things for spring. I’m not even going to the grocery store and we’re limiting our exposure time by making errand runs only once or so a week. For this project, I’m bringing a little more green in to my home the best way possible in these wild times: by building my own cardboard cacti. Here we go!

MATERIALS:
+ thinner cardboard scraps (easier to cut)
+ paint (I used acrylic)
+ scissors
+ glue
+ brushes and water

Using several different kinds of greens, paint your pieces of cardboard. Notice I didn’t mind mixing my colors together and didn’t always paint the whole scrap.. Just as in previous lessons, the variety of colors helps to give it a more vibrant, realistic feel. I love the change in shades! Let these dry for a while before our next step otherwise your hands will get very messy.

Once you’ve let them dry, cut out some cactus shapes. I looked at some pictures before I did my cutting and then made some of the larger main parts and some smaller “arms”. If you need to draw before cutting, go for it! I just cut out my scraps knowing I had some extra painted pieces.

I glued some of the “arms” on to the larger main pieces to create the full cactus shape. This will need to dry for a while before painting.

Go back to your paints and create some texture stripes on the cactus. Depending on the type of cactus you’re making the lines may look different. OR just paint the same ones, no biggie! Be creative!

Add some spines if you’d like. I added them to one and left them off another. Change colors if you’d like, you don’t have to use black or white the way I did. Have fun making your own kind of cactus.

For fun you can stick it in an empty mug, planter, decorative can, etc! I grabbed a mug and planted one of my cacti. This was so much fun that I think I’m going to try this with some other household plants because plants make me happy. Until I can plant more of the real thing, this’ll do! Happy making!