How To Make a Giant Papier Mâché Saguaro

One of the things I love about living in the Sonoran Desert are the magnificent saguaros. I thought it would be fun to have a fake Saguaro to decorate for Christmas instead of a Christmas Tree.  Alas I couldn't find any online that didn't cost an arm or a leg or were just not suitable.  In my online hunt though I came across a blog that had instructions to make one, Pillar Box Blue. So I'm giving credit where credit is due for the wonderful inspiration by Claire Armstrong.   We didn't end up following the same directions; hey I'm married to an engineer and he came up with a different core structure using plumbing pipes and joints. TIP: make sure to glue the joints together. 

We covered with chicken wire and then wrapped with shipping plastic wrap we had left over from our move here. Using plastic wrap helped to make the surface smooth enough to glue on strips of news print. Our next problem was how to get the vertical ridges. Again Mr. Engineer came up with a solution and we used air

filters which look perfect. So we could have skipped the newsprint paper mache step and just put the filter straight over the wire and plastic wrap. I used fishing wire to stitch the filter edges together. Next stage was to glue on torn

strips of packing paper.

TIP: Torn edges blended in much better than cut or straight edges.

Once that was done it was just a matter of painting it.

6ft Papier-mâché Saguaro

One thing we didn't do was anchor the sagauaro in a bucket with plaster of paris. We found using a large basket and loo rolls for the center pole and packing it around the sides with paper towel rolls made it very lightweight but stable. Once I have the sagauaro in the house we will put stones around it to hide the paper towel rolls.

  It’s been a fun project to do together and trying to figure out each step and how to get the effect we wanted. It ended up costing around $100 for all the supplies, which doesn't make it a easy peasy cheapy project. Long term though I think we are going to enjoy our Saguaro.

SUPPLY LIST
plumbing pipes/joints
chicken wire
Gallon Elmers Glue
Paint Brushes
cling wrap
packing paper
air filters (5 22"x 25"x 1")
Spray paint