By General Crafts Contributor Michelle

Succulents are known for their low maintenance ways, but these crafted little cuties are just as sweet, and have zero needs. Make your own sweet succulents to use in your decor and crafting.

Here’s what you’ll need to make your own:

• Foamies Foam Sheet 12 x 18 in. 2 mm.–various shades of green
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• White acrylic craft paint
• Other colors of acrylic craft paint –I used red to highlight
• Piece of sponge, or sponge brush

To begin, cut a circle from your foam. My circles were about 6-inches in diameter, and resulted in about 2-inch succulents. Trim the outer edge of your circle into your desired leaf shape–scallops, zig zag, leaf shaped. Try to keep the “leaves” fairly uniform.

Starting at the outer edge, begin cutting the same “leaf” shaped pattern into the circle in a spiraling shaped to the center. It may be easier to use a pen to lightly draw the spiral into the center, and block out your leaf pattern for cutting.

Here you can see the next succulent I made I used a zig-zag pattern around the edge.

And cut the zig-zag pattern around in a spiral to the center.

To make the center, cut a small circle of foam (mine was about the size of a quarter), and fold it into quarters. Hot glue it together, and hold until cool.

Take your the center piece you just made, and begin wrapping the foam spiral around the small center piece beginning in the MIDDLE of your spiral. Dot with hot glue as you go, and hold until cool. The foam tends to insulate the glue a bit, retaining the heat, and it doesn’t stick quite as quickly as it does on other materials.

Continue winding and gluing the spiral around the center, pulling the foam to offset the leaves from one another and give your succulent a rounded shape.

If you desire, cut some larger leaves from your foam, and glue them around the outside at the end to make it larger, or give it a more round shape.

You can also use your acrylic craft paint and sponge to lightly brush your foam before you coil it, to give it a more realistic look.

You can also lightly pat or brush paint on after you assemble your succulent, to highlight the edges of the leaves, and give them the “frosted” look that so many real succulents have.

I suggest looking online at photos of real succulents to decide what to make yours look like–there are so many pretty ones! I made these to fill a container I have, but you could also use them on wreaths, to decorate presents, to give as gifts. How could you use these everlasting succulents in your crafting?

Happy crafting!