[crafts] Pistachio Shell Succulents

I pinned this hanging succulent garden craft project a long time ago. I thought that the pistachio shells really did look like sempervivium. Using this project as an excuse to buy all the pistachios, I saved shells for a while and finally glued them together last weekend.

Pretty. Tedious to make but pretty. I glued them together on waxpaper. Once they set, I turned them over and squeezed more hot glue into gaps, just to secure the shells more.

I used food coloring to dye them:

The crafter of the original project used Rit dye, which seems to have dyed her shells in anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. Food coloring took way longer- like, 30 minutes in some cases. Being in the dye bath for so long, some of the shells became saturated and fell off from the hard glue bottom. There was a lot of re-gluing I had to do after the fact- to repair the succulents. So, I wouldn't recommend food coloring.

What to do with them now? I would like to find a small table, with a lip/edge, to display these with my rock collection. I have a wooden sign board that is meant to be hung but I could attach legs to each of the four corners and convert it into a small table.