Decorative birdhouses are a pretty choice when it comes to garden ornaments — and you can let your imagination run free!
Painted Birdhouses
Cobble together a basic birdhouse shape with leftover bits of wood, if you’re handy in the shop, or pick up a plain wooden birdhouse for next to nothing at the hardware store craft section.
Try latex house paint for the broad strokes, with acrylic craft paints for fine details — like I used to paint my little church birdhouse — and finish it off with a coat of clear poly sealer to protect your artwork from the sun’s UV rays and the rain.
Stone & Mosaic Birdhouses
For a decorative birdhouse that’s even more unusual, what about stonework or mosaic? It’s a DIY craft project that’s much easier than it might at first sound, although not as fast as painting it.
Better Homes & Gardens has a good step-by-step tutorial for making a mosaic birdhouse, starting with a simple store-bought birdhouse as a base. You can pick up inexpensive damaged or broken tiles “for a song” (or for free) from hardware stores and kitchen design shops.
Broken china is another option — check the yard sales and thrift stores for pretty china at a bargain price.
And if you’re feeling more ambitious, making a stone birdhouse is just one step more challenging than a basic flat-tile mosaic, well within reach of the average keen craftster.
Melissa (Pioneer Woman with a Cell Phone!) has transformed a four-dollar wooden birdhouse into a wonderful stone mosaic lighthouse, using small stone she bought at the dollar store. She gives good instructions to explain the process…
And wouldn’t it be fun to do this with stones picked up on a family cottage vacation? What a very personal piece of garden art that would be!
Yep… Romanian. She is really cute. I am a bit sad I cannot go there to hold her in my arms… I’ll put a picture of her and my “brother” (cousin) on one of my blogs soon… I’ll let you know.
Sometimes you just have to abuse the garden art, Mihaela! Sorry about that – I accidentally turned off comments on the Man Buys Gift post… but they’re back on now, in case your poor cousin feels the need to make a retort…
Miruna-Maria is a lovely name – Romanian, I presume?
J. Couldn’t find the “comments” for the “Man Buys Gift for Himself, Scores Big with Wife on Mother’s Day” so I abuse the garden art to tell you how much I enjoyed that entry. I had a good laugh. I sent the link to my cousin (he is like a brother to me) because he really needs to make a nice surprise to his wife. No, there are no problems in paradise! There is a little joy: Miruna-Maria. So now Adina is really a Hot Mom.