From pool noodle to disco cactus
One of my favorite reoccurring segments on Let’s Make a Deal is called Free Samples, because there is a great possibility I’m about to be tasked with making something incredibly random and cool. The premise of this “deal” is to present the trader with a miscellaneous prop filled with a large mystery quantity of something. The trader then has a choice between $5 per item on the prop or a mystery prize behind the curtain.
In this episode, our prop was a disco cactus, with a mystery number of disco tiles! I was really excited about this project, it was in December of 2022 when these disco shapes were super trendy and I was planning on DIYing a disco mushroom for my sisters Christmas gift so this assignment felt like the perfect place to practice.
During our prop meeting with producers about this project, we showed example sizes with a pool noodle. Since they signed off on that exact height, I decided to use that piece of noodle as the base of my cactus. We screwed a post into a weighted base and slid the pool noodle onto the post so it would stay standing. We had some skinny pool noodle cores from another project that were perfectly proportioned to be my Saguaro cactus’ arms, so I fortified them with armature wire and bent them into shape, then stuck the end of the wire into the main cactus base. I wrapped everything tightly in gaff tape to secure the shape.
I wanted a smooth surface to apply the disco tiles, so my next step was to roll out a thin slab of air dry clay and mold it around my pool noodle cactus shape. I have very little experience working with clay, and even less with air-dry clay, but I rarely shy away from a new medium. I covered my cactus shape in clay and went home for the day.
When I got back to the office the next morning, I noticed that my clay cracked in a few spots. Thankfully, I knew this was going to be covered with tiles so it didn’t need to be super pretty. I filled the cracks with E6000 glue and let it dry. Then I started applying my green, disco tiles.
The disco tiles are self adhesive, but I wanted to ensure they’d stay in place so I glued them all on with E6000. Adding the tiles was a slow and somewhat therapeutic process — I had to keep track of the number of tiles I was applying, so I stayed focused and in the zone for quite awhile. By the end of the application process, I had come up with a pretty solid technique and was making quick progress.
In hindsight, I should have painted my cactus shape green before applying the tiles because there were a few teeny gaps when I finished that I needed to touch up carefully at the end.
My boss, Christine, is the queen of displays so I passed the cactus to her at this point to finish it up. She fit it into a terracotta pot with some styrofoam filling and a top layer of pebbles.
I love the way this project turned out, and it's inspired me to attempt other disco creations as well!
