Last fall I made a super easy DIY rock cactus. It turned out really cute and best part—cost me nothing because I had all supplies already on hand.
I forgot to blog about it, so here I am six months later with the full tutorial…finally.
I gathered my supplies
– 5-10 larger river rocks
– Green acrylic paint (2-3 different shades)
– Paint brushes
– White paint marker
– Plant pot
– Handful of used plastic grocery sacks (not shown)
– Small river rock
Optional
– Faux pink flower(s)
– Hot glue gun
OR
– Pink acrylic paint and a faux flower in any color
I started by painting the rocks with two quick coats of the green paint (my toddler even got into the action). I decided to do three different cactus “plants” at the same time, so you might need to paint more or less rocks depending on how many plants you wanna make. I did most of them in a solid color, but decided to paint stripes on a couple.
Ignore the disgusting linoleum floor…we were/are in the middle of a kitchen reno, so we decided to paint on the kitchen flooring since it was all getting removed that week.
Once the rocks were dry I laid them all out together and then started to divide them up into different DIY rock cactus “plants”.
I took my white sharpie pen and drew some cactus-like patterns on them. Stars and polka dots seemed to work best for me.
Once the white paint quickly dried, I took my pots and stuffed the bottoms with handfuls of plastic grocery bags.
This fills up the space and lets you get away with only using a handful of small river rock on the tops in each pot. It also keeps the cactus lightweight.
I began to layer the rocks into the pots until I was happy with their placement.
And here is how two of the DIY rock cactus plants looked.
I decided that the simple single cactus needed a pink flower and that the both pots needed a paint dipped look, so I painted a two faux flowers that I found around the house pink and taped off the pots and painted them as well.
I hot glued the flower to two of my cactus plants, and bam…I had my very own DIY cactus rock garden.

What do you think? Will you give it a try? The results are super cute.
I have mine placed in my home office nook, and they bring a pop of color to my day.
xoxo
Audrey