Starting a Cactus Trend

As you almost certainly remember (because we talk about it constantly), last month we created an award winning side table out of a thrift store fuzzy plastic cactus:

Since then, it seems like cactus projects are appearing everywhere. Either we’re major trendsetters, or we’re just noticing more now that we have cacti on the mind (it’s almost certainly the former).

Because we’re apparently not the only people doing awesome things inspired by these prickly plants, we thought we’d share a roundup of some other cool cactus projects we’ve come across in case you, too, have caught the cactus bug. Plus global warming is coming for all of us, so we may as well get used to desert conditions (except those of us living on the coast — we’ll have plenty of water to drink live under).

Note: at the risk of being ejected from DIY blogland, we’ve excluded succulents.

First up, we obviously have to start with someone who has “cactus” in their blog name: Babs, from Patchwork Cactus. Her tutorial for creating hand stamped fabric is awesome:

And you could personalize this in so many ways, like adding a splash of color to mimic flowers on some of the cacti.

For those of us with such a black thumb that we manage to kill even cacti, here’s the perfect project from the blog El Nido de Mama Gallina, which uses painted stones to imitate real plants:

No one looks at a cactus and thinks, “mmmmm, that looks tasty!” Until now, that is. Here’s a project from Alana Jones-Mann that manages to make even cacti look delicious with these insanely amazing cupcakes:

Also, why do tomatoes have a monopoly on the pincushion market? Cactus pincushions are so much better.  There are loads of crochet tutorials out there, but we particularly love this sewn cactus pincushion by Anna over at Plan B.

Did you know that you could make your own neon lights?  We sure didn’t, until we saw this amazing DIY Neon Cactus Light by Lindsay over at Shrimp Salad Circus using electroluminescent (say that 5 times fast) wire.

Finally, Casey from Vitamini Handmade is a woman after our own hearts, who was presented with plastic cacti and  decided to transform them with spray paint.  She turned tiny plastic figures from the craft store into faux porcelain ring holders.  So cute!

What an extraordinary trend we’ve launched!

Wait, you say some of those projects are from before our groundbreaking cactus table victory, and that we were merely jumping on the trend that had already begun?

Details.