Four Upcycled Creations That are for the Birds!

Baby season is upon us....for birds and other creatures who call your yard home it is anyway.  Wouldn't it be nice to offer a helping hand to all those new little families?  Especially if you can add some whimsy to your yard and garden for not a lot of cash at the same time.  Check out these four super quick, cheap and upcycled pieces that grace my garden:

Just have to have one?  You will not believe how incredibly simple each one of these is to make!

1.  Seed Feeder made from a thrifted bud vase, plate and planter
2.  Hummingbird Feeder made from a wine bottle
3.  Bird Bath made from a thrifted plant pot and a decorative bowl
4.  Nest Box made from a thrifted tea kettle and a piece of pallet wood

Most of these projects required not much more than silicone adhesive to complete and are a snap to make!

Which one will you make?

A DIY Lighting Parts Bird Bath

Are you ready for another Mother's Day Patio Makeover Project?  I sure hope so, only two more after this one.  So today, it's an  upcycled lighting parts bird bath:

I love this bird bath!  It reminds me of one of those fancy tulips. If you decide to upcycle yourself one of these bad boys, keep in mind that every piece is going to be different.  The way you attach things is going to be different.  You're going to have to wing it some of the time.  Let me show you how I did mine.  Er, tell you most of the time.  I wasn't very good about taking pictures for this one.

First, the basics.  You'll need an old or thrifted lamp base, some kind of bowl shaped object with a hole in the center (or be willing to drill one) and you'll need some silicone for sealing around the hole to make sure the water stays in.  Optionally, you may want to use some spray paint - I did!  And you may want to add some kind of embellishment to the center of the bowl to hide the silicone blob - I did!

To get started rip your lamp apart, if you're good with wiring lights then hang on to those parts and reuse them in another project.  Paint your lamp base if desired.  Mine was a pretty simple black base with a golden faux sponge finish.  It was pretty yucky, so I pulled out the bright pink spray paint and coated the entire lamp base a couple of times.

Before you attach the bowl consider where your bath will be? Is the bowl in danger of breaking easily?  My bowl is actually a ceiling light cover and is very fragile so I pulled out my drill and drilled a hole in each of the feet.  Make the holes large enough to accommodate a very long carriage bolt if it is to be "attached" to softer earth or screws if it will be screwed into a deck, like mine.

With that done, time to attach the bowl. When you pulled your lamp apart you should have been left with a threaded bit of rod at the top.  This is where you'll attach your bowl.  I didn't want it to snap when the glass hit the threaded rod so I slid on a rubber washer in just the right size to wiggle in between the two pieces, protecting the glass from shattering. Then I added a nut to the threaded rod to keep everything in place.

To make sure there was no leaking I added a blob of silicone (this is my favorite adhesive!) to the threaded rod and nut.  You can imagine it was pretty ugly so added more silicone and then took a clear votive holder and flipped it upside down on top of the blob.  Perfect!  Let that cure for a minimum of three hours and you're ready to bust out the bubble bath for the birds.

Yep, that's all there is to it!  You're going to try it right?

A Mother's Day Patio Redo

Last weekend I surprised my mom with a Mother's Day patio makeover. I think you'll agree it was a pretty sad state of affairs before I got my hands on it.  This was pretty much all the patio consisted of:

Pretty sad, right?  The patio furniture all stacked up in the corner was in desperate need of a cleaning.  There was also a broken down old hummingbird feeder (with nectar from last season none-the-less), a worn out bird seed feeder and a colorless child's chair that my 5'4" niece used to sit in...years ago.  With everything that my parents are up to they haven't had the time to put into the yard and patio spaces.  So, for Mother's Day, I added some life to the patio.

Here is the after:

And, I added a little bird garden over here:

This is mom's favorite space because when she raises the bedroom blinds in the morning this is what she sees.  Here are a few more closeups, I'll show you how I did each of these projects over the next couple of weeks.

A cleaned and refinished patio set - almost like new, a planter made from a Bundt pan, and a large planter with an upcyled seed feeder.

A little seating area that includes a couple of refinished chairs that were rusting out in the yard, a table made of pallets and a planter made from a chandelier.

Oh so many projects and oh so little time.  Can't wait to share these DIY project specifics with you!

My Newly Upcycled Bird Bath

I love this bird feeder!  It's little, it's cute, it's one-of-a-kind and it's upcycled!

After a morning of yard sales that left me empty handed, I headed to my nearest Goodwill on the hunt for some wonderful pieces to make my own bird feeder.  I found some wonderful bowl-like dishes that would have been beautiful in my garden.  But they were part of a complete set that still had lots of life left in them in their current form and I only needed one.  So off I went to continue my search through the adjacent isles.  Just when I was about to give up, along came this beauty:

It was the only one, tucked in the back of a shelf and the perfect reward for resisting taking one from a full set earlier.  I picked up a perfectly matched flower vase to serve as pedestal of my bird bath.  And all I had to do was use a little silicone adhesive between the two.

Just one more look:

Isn't it adorable?