 Well, hi there, it's Sandy Olnock and today I have a crazy project that you can do with stuff You probably already have at home in this quarantine season This whole crazy adventure started with this little ball I have a whole closet with a giant box in the on the whole bottom shelf That's full of wooden and paper mache stuff that I have bought over the years and said, you know someday I'm gonna paint that I'm gonna do something with that and These were going to be doll heads at one point. I just had this urge to make doll heads I don't know why I don't know what I was gonna make out of the rest of them because I don't sew So I couldn't actually make clothes for them So I decided they're gonna be cactus because I'm working on getting rid of a bunch of stuff That's in that closet. I painted it like a cactus light green on the top Dark green on the bottom and the brush I found one that fit in that hole So I could hold it stably and not have to hold it with my fingers and stuff which was super helpful and Then I'm gonna mix a green in between the light and the dark to just swap with this old yucky brush and get a transition going between them. I Let it all dry and then started painting designs on them Now you can paint all kinds of crazy designs and it'll still look like a cactus So get as crazy or as mild as you wish I decided to add some of the little spines. I think that's what they're called on cactus I think they're spines. I don't know whatever the the ouchy parts of a cactus. I drew those on just with a sharpie marker any kind of marker that writes on Paint will do and I also decided lots of you are not going to have little round balls in your closet To do this project with but you do have rocks. Everybody's got rocks Go find a parking lot and you will find rocks along the edge of a parking lot if you live in an apartment or something and Collect some that have interesting shapes to them find some that you can use for large paddles Like I think that's what they're called that one that I'm painting currently is Kind of shaped like a paddle you put that end down in the dirt and then the top part gets bigger It kind of looks cool I also found some little teeny tiny ones that I painted in Pinks and oranges so that I could add those on top later as flowers on some of my cacti But these are so much fun to do. They're They're a really great way to while away in afternoon when you just need to keep your hands busy Next up was pots Because now you got to have something to put the cacti in and I had this paper mache pot that I bought and I realized after I bought it that I couldn't actually plant anything in it because it's paper mache and That I'd have to find some really good use for it and this seemed like a good one So I painted it up I could have painted white underneath of it just to make the colors brighter, but didn't worry about that I just went for it on my little pots. These are little ceramic ones I painted the white first so my colors you can see you're definitely brighter You can choose which you want to do on your project And I just went from yellow to orange and then mix some pink in down toward the bottom so I can get a little ombre look I make them fun. You can draw designs on them. You can do along them all different kinds of ways You could decorate these guys up super fun super easy super low pressure and nice spring colors as well If you don't have pots in your stash, you might have Dixie cups So I tried this to see if paint would weaken the Dixie cup too much And they are a little soft and squishy rather than being really stiff But you could layer two of them together and the one that you tuck on the inside you might try Cutting the top down a little bit so it's down set inside of the cup That might help to make it feel a little more stable, but I didn't do that and it seemed to work just fine So then I'm doing the ombre on this one as well yellow with the top orange and then pink down below Inside them you can either put dirt from your garden or if you don't have dirt You live in an apartment in the city get some rice put some rice in there And you can put your little cacti in their little pots so cute You can put your little rocks in there You can tuck in one of the little flower rocks and this is one of the Dixie cups Just so you can see how it is with dirt little squishy, but not horribly bad And then you could put a couple in that one They're bigger than the little pots that I have so I could fit a couple a little cactus pieces in there And then this is my really big one I gave this to a friend of mine over the weekend dropped it off at her house when we took a walk Put my lovely little shaped cactus in there My friend used to live in Southern California, and I thought she would particularly enjoy one of these so I painted the Pot for her in her favorite colors so you can customize these for someone you're sending them to as well And with all these little cactus rocks you can just switch them around arrange them any way you like and Decide what what you want them to look like how many you want to put in there, etc I used some e6000 to glue on the little rocks on the tippy tops And some of you may need to hold in place for a little while so the glue sets with stuff is super super sticky And pretty industrially strong so Once I got things kind of balanced up there in the glue dried it worked just great And then the last thing is to make them timely So I made little signs to stick in them life is tough But so are you is from an Ellen Hudson stamp set from the succulent set of Sentiments and I just added quarantine sucks on the top in my own little handwriting and trimmed it down and taped on a little To pick on the back so I could stab it into the dirt in my little pots and I delivered one of them. I'm gonna mail a couple of these out as well And then I'm gonna drop off the rest on the porches of neighbors just gonna leave it there with no note just a little smile for them and Maybe that'll make somebody's day. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope your quarantine is going well I will see you again very soon tag me if you make these I want to see yours too. All right. Bye. Bye guys