You’re on Pinterest right? I’ll be honest, when I first started, everything I pinned was something I wanted to make. I got over that real soon. Oh, I still pin things I want to make, bake, eat, create and paint. But frankly, it’s just eye candy.
Then along comes Sherry of Young House Love with a Pinterest Challenge.
Are you a fan of Young House Love like I am?
“Challenge”!?! (name that movie. Hint: Travolta, wings.)
It’s almost Spring and I’m knee deep in Easter decorations, class paintings and home school curriculum. Oh, I’m not the one homeschooling. (Are you crazy?) No, I’m putting together an art class for a blogger friend of mine who homeschools. A live home school art class via Google+ Hangouts. How cool is that? I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Back to the Challenge. I thought it’d take me a few days to settle upon just one Pinterest project that I actually thought I could would create. Nope. I saw these DIY Bird Feeders and fell in love.
Since Pinterest has become all the rage, I’m now pretty careful and I click over to what I hope is the original source of the pin. Too often the source isn’t there, which really bothers me. But this time not only did I get the pin source, I found out that my friend Sara at Mom Endeavors made the bird feeders.
Okay, so actually her cutie-patootie boys made them. But when it comes to crafting, I love doing “kids” crafts.
It generally removes the element of frustration in my project. Generally.
So, lessee . . . I need a tree to hang my soon-to-be-made Pinterest-Challenge bird feeders.
We live on 13 gorgeous acres studded with pines and oak trees, all of them old and extremely tall. But we do have this one solitary almond tree. Oh, the almond tree, if it could tell tales.
You see, I’m living with my mother in my childhood home, a house that was built in the ‘30’s. Throughout my childhood we always had at least one dog, if not two, and usually a kitty. As happens in life, our pets would eventually die. Guess where Dad would bury them?
Yep. Under the almond tree.
I don’t think I’ve walked over to it since I was a girl. It’s not far from the house but it sets in an area where I don’t walk.
As I drew nearer I saw that it’s just starting to burst into bloom. Ah-mazing. This tree hasn’t been watered, not to mention pruned, by anyone other than Mother Nature since before Dad died in 2000. And here are these lovely blossoms.
This is where I wanted my DIY bird feeders, hanging from the almond tree that holds so many treasured memories.
Sara used paint cans from Lowe’s to make her bird feeders. I don’t live near Lowe’s and all of my paint cans have, well, paint in them. But I had an idea.
I do live fairly close to Safeway and have developed quite a penchant for their soups. Mmmmm. Nothing better than hot yummy soup for lunch on a cold day. Safeway’s soups come in these wonderful plastic tubs – 24 oz. I think. Perfect size for a paint brush water basin. Or Jack-o-lantern bowling pins.
Yesterday the afternoon temps climbed just high enough to bring my spray paint out of hibernation. Oh yes. First sign of Fall and I lug all of my paints from the workshop into my bedroom studio until it’s warm enough in the Spring. Tools of the trade and all that, you know.
Krylon Paint + Primer is great because it’s indoor-outdoor. It’s not specifically made for plastic like Fusion is but I took a chance. (Worked like a charm.)
After my soon-to-be bird feeders dried I brought them inside to look for some pretty decorative ribbon like Sara used. Nothing. Nada. I thought about mod podging some pretty scrapbook paper on them. Huh-uh. By the time I did all that I could just as easily paint a few branches and almond blossoms. So that’s what I did.
What, you can’t tell those are branches?
How about now? I used some grey and a bit of light brown and painted wiggly “Y’s”.
With white paint I added five petals for each blossom.
Hey, this would totally be a good thumbprint painting idea, wouldn’t it? I need to remember that.
Some bright green worked for in between the white petals and some simple leaves, then a dot of brown for the centers.
I’ve been wanting to paint flowering branches lately – cherry, apple – but I hadn’t thought about almond.
Expect to see a series of three flowering branches here pretty soon, k?
Now comes the hard part – figuring out how to hang these guys. Sara used paint cans with pretty ribbon. I’m using soup tubs with jute twine.
Do you see why I choose kids projects when I craft? I don’t follow directions well.
I snagged some twigs and used epoxy to glue them to the inside of the tubs for the birdy perches.
I won’t tell you how many times it took me to figure out how to hang these guys. Let’s just say I had more than my regular daily commune with Nature.
Not bad though, huh? Pretty cute. Oh, one last thing – add the bird seed after you hang the feeders. Trust me on that.
I wish I had gotten a pic of a birdie perched on his new feeder but I didn’t. I’m thinking between the smell of the recent spray paint and the epoxy, Birdie told his friends to steer clear of the new digs.
Oh well. It’s nearly Spring. Every morning I wake up to an incredible orchestra of new baby birds chirping. One of the babies will stop by soon after the smell has dissipated and tell his brothers & sisters about the good eats.
Colleen
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