This is my 5 year old daughter's bet first instruct able. I hope you all like her invention.

Step 1: Find a Skeleton of a Cactus

My daughter found her cactus skeleton while we were camping in Indian Cove, Joshua Tree National Park (we picked it up outside the park in 21 Palms -make sure you don't take any from a park).They are a plenty everywhere in Southern California.

Step 2: Clean You Skeleton

Use a knife to clean off the excess 'skin' from your skeleton and any remaining barbs. Also there might be some dried 'guts' that you'll want to try to poke out as gently as possible but be careful not to damage the skeleton.

Step 3: Paint Your Skeleton As You Please

Go crazy, paint it any color you want. We used some water based play paints my daughter has.

Then we use a clear spray finish canister to seal in the paint once the paint had dried.

Step 4: Find a Base & Decorate It

We use an old wooden coaster as our base. Anything solid will do, and it doesn't need to be very large, in fact the coaster size appeared to be the perfect size.

We then decided to stay with the desert theme and coated the coaster with decomposed granite from our yard by spreading construction adhesive to the coaster and scooping the DG onto the adhesive and then shaking it off.

Step 5: Glue the Two Together

Then apply a large amount of adhesive to the bottom of the skeleton and a fix the two together while propping up the skeleton so it can dry in the correct position. We used Lego pieces to prop it up. (To cover up the excess glue we sprinkled a little more DG on top of the spillover) A few hours later it was all dry and ready to hand my daughter's necklaces and earrings on.