rocks to cactus

Okay you say!  Rocks to cactus!  Interesting!  For those inquiring minds asking about where I got this idea and how I did it!   The whole story is this...

Here they are in the pot where they now reside.  Now I didn't go for the OMG! they look so real look but for the "I really like these and I am so happy I don't have to worry about watering them look!"  I tried them in another pot but I like this one best.

A few weeks ago my dear husband sent me a link on Facebook showing this cactus garden in a bowl...Chuck thought I might be interested in trying my hand at making a display like the picture he sent me.  I did.  It took me a while to find the rocks I wanted/needed because to buy them at Michael's or Hobby Lobby could cost me a small fortune!  3 rocks for about $6 was a little steeper then I wanted to pay to play with.   I found the rocks I needed at an outdoor garden store that sells nothing but rocks, big and small, and the concrete statuary for outside near Newcastle, OK.   I paid about $10 for a huge lot of rocks(30 lbs.) and will probably have enough rocks for a lot of other projects for a long time.   I got to pick out what rocks I wanted and this is what I got.  Some flat, some round but mostly odd shaped and lighter in color.

First thing you need to do is give all the rocks a good bath.  OMG!  talk about dusty and dirty.  I guess the paint would eventually mix in with the dirt but a bath is good and I just set them out to dry for a few days in the sun.

Next thing I did was paint every rock a different color of green.  I added white or yellow to a basic green and painted a few rock, added some dark green or black in and painted a couple more....Get the idea?  Don't make it too hard cause it is suppose to be a fun project.  I did a web search and found a whole lot of info on painted rock cactus and I started painting mine just however I wanted and however I thought they would look as a caricature of a cactus.  I actually found some that looked like real cactus and I thought it was too much work and some that were even too primitive for me.  Check out Pinterest for some ideas.

So after painting all my rocks green and getting ideas from various online spots I started painting my rocks and detailing them. 

 

 From top left...

1. dashed lines all across the top and down each side
2. lighter colored lines that I made x's on and put a dot in the middle of each x.
3. just lighter dots
4. x's gone wrong here...I made what looked like flowers and put yellow dots in the middle
5. a flower on the cactus.  Before I did the messed up flower I used various shades of green in a highlighting technique...fancy word cause I actually smeared paint on till I liked how it looked
6. dashed dark lines on lighter green
7. light x's on dark green
8. a rock that had natural pock marks that I just painted green and left it alone
9. once again I slapped some light and dark lines on until I liked how it looked then added white lines and x's with dots in them to simulate spines and stickers.
10. dots and spikey lines.

a little better picture of the stones on the work table.

The other pot!  I thought it looked over crowded is why I moved it into the above pot.  I liked the way the natural rocks make them stand out too. 

 Hope this answered some of the questions I was asked.  I was surprised at the number of sites that popped up when I Googled painted rocks and then painted cactus rocks.  Give it a try.  This was a fun project.