Three Little Birds: Upcycled Bird Feeders

Our nature walk last week prompted us to try and bring real nature a little closer to home.  We've had our eyes peeled for a good birdfeeder, but haven't seen any under $100 that we like.  So we decided to use old milk and juice cartons to make our own.  For several reasons, this project turned out to be mom-intensive.  Despite asking to paint the carton over and over again, when it came time to do so, Cam wanted absolutely nothing to do with this.  I wanted something to do with it, but had entirely different plans.  That being said, this project is entirely kid friendly, so give it a go,  Here's what you'll need to make ours:

- an empty and cleaned milk or juice carton
- an exacto knife or sharp scissors
- white paint
- bleeding tissue paper
- paint brush (we found sponge paint brushes worked best to fold the tissue paper around the carton)
- white liquid glue (watered down to "paint on" tissue paper)
- mod podge
- stick
- string

Mom first cut the large opening and then painted each one with two coats of white BioColor paint -- sort of as a primer (as you'll see below, this isn't a necessary step).  Once the primer dried, mom tore up small pieces of bleeding tissue paper and gave us each watered down glue to use.  I started out "painting" the pieces of tissue paper on nicely, but then decided I wanted to take them off, which was a cool idea because the tissue paper leaves behind color anyways (and we've done that purposefully before).  But then I wanted to tear the primer off.  And then I wanted to tear holes in the carton.  Mom was attempting to remain hands off and let me do what I want (even though she was muttering, "good f'in thing i primed that sucker twice.  and, btw, i don't even like birds.")

And once I saw that she really wasn't going to intervene, I lost interest.  Mom covered hers with the tissue paper and then I decided I actually did want to do it, so she helped me with mine also.  Even without the primer, it looked cool.  Once they dried, mom put two coats of Mod Podge over them (to help keep the rain from totally destroying them -- we'll see if it works).  Once that finally dried, she cut a hatch mark with the exacto knife for the stick (on both sides of the carton so it went through the front and out the back a bit).  She then made a small hole on either side of the top of the carton and ran some twine through.

We filled them with birdseed and hung them on a tree over our back deck.  Now what's the over/under on how long it takes squirrels to wreck these?  Ahhhh, city living.

Oh, one final thing -- when putting the tissue paper on, I pasted some on my face (right between my eyes) on accident (hey, I get into it).  Although I took a long bath that night, we somehow overlooked making sure it came off.  The next morning I peeled it off.  And I peeled off some of my skin, too.  And the scab after that.  And the scab after that.  Which was AWESOME because we had family pictures and school pictures right around the corner.  Fortunately (or unfortunately), our family pictures got rained out and mom forgot about the school pictures and sent me to school on Monday in a dirty (literally) pirate shirt.  So the front and center scab at least kind of worked with the shirt.  And even though it's not the coolest way to get injured, if you ask, I'll tell you what daddy told me to say: the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.  In any event, we suggest NOT pasting tissue paper onto your face if you can avoid it.

Scroll to the bottom for links to bleeding tissue paper, Mod Podge, and BioColor at DSS! 

Yo:  We are now Discount School Supply affiliates and the links below to DSS are affiliate links.  If you click on any of these links (or the general DSS link on the right hand side of our blog) and make a purchase, we will receive a small percentage of the sale from DSS.  So do us a solid and help support our arts and crafts habit -- if you are going to buy something from DSS, do it through Not-So-SAHM!

primed and ready

put it on

take it off

"do you think this looks cool, mommy?"

"all finished"

here's moms

all Mod Podged up

ready for some seed! 

done

and done

20 x 30 Colorations Premium Bleeding Tissue Paper - 100 Sheets Our premium art tissue is perfect for making arts and crafts projects of all types.

Mod Podge - Gloss - 16 oz Create groovy crafts in a flash with this 3-in-1 glue sealer and finish! Quick-dries clear on decoupage collages and albums for a glossy polished look. Glues to a variety of surfaces. 16 oz.

BioColor Paint 16 oz. BioColor does it all! It's so versatile - use with brushes spatulas or our paint accessories. It spreads and adheres easily to paper plastic wood metal cardboard. It shines brilliantly when dry and won't crack or fade with age! Use for fabric painting sticker art and marbling projects or make multi-colored putty!

I Got Five On It: Cinco de Mayo Pottery

Mom is still in arts and crafts recovery after my second birthday party (you can see below that most of the decorations are still up!), but with Cinco de Mayo coming up this weekend, we pulled it together to make some (very) loosely Mexican-inspired pottery.  We found what looked to be a relatively easy recipe for making clay -- here's what you'll need:

- 4 cups flour

- 1 cup salt

- about 1 3/4 cups water (you'll likely need to add more when working with the clay)

Combine the flour and salt.  Then slowly add in water while stirring.  Shape into whatever you like.  Then cook pottery pieces at 200 F for 10 - 20 minutes (NOTE: we ended up cooking ours for several hours, leaving them out over night, and then putting them back in the oven the next day --- and they still weren't completely dry).  

After mom mixed the clay up, she told us we were going to try and make two different kinds of bowls -- pinch bowls and coiled bowls.  Kane said "um.  no, i'm going to make volcanoes.  pirate volcanoes."  Mom at least convinced him to make a pirate ship, which sort of resembles an oblong bowl.  But he then insisted on making a "pirate island" and some small "dinghies."  I helped mom make some coils for the coiled pots, but I really wasn't that into it.  

But we were both much more into painting the pottery once it had FINALLY dried.  Mom gave us red, green and white BioColor paint to use -- we were trying to keep it somewhat related to Cinco de Mayo.  I asked mom for pink paint about 7,000 times, but she didn't cave.  Once I realized that I was stuck with the colors I had, I actually really got into it.  And I spent much more time painting carefully, holding the pieces in my left hand and painting with my right, than I do when we just paint on paper.  Kane painted his pirate ship and made a hole for the mast.  The island got a nice coat of green paint and he painted water swirling around it on the table.

We're letting the paint dry a bit more and then mom plans to give them a good coat of Mod Podge (btw, have you seen this blog devoted entirely to crafting with Mod Podge? awesome).

These aren't the prettiest pieces of pottery we've ever seen, but we had fun and it was our first foray into clay.  I have a feeling we'll be trying out some new recipes, too -- we had a hard time getting this to dry (although a lot of that probably had to do with our construction) and it's pretty lumpy.  Oh well, hopefully daddy will still put one on his desk as a Cinco de Mayo paperclip holder!

Want to give them a go yourself?  Scroll to the bottom for links to BioColor and Mod Podge at Discount School Supply!

Yo:  We are now Discount School Supply affiliates and the links below to DSS are affiliate links.  If you click on any of these links (or the general DSS link on the right hand side of our blog) and make a purchase, we will receive a small percentage of the sale from DSS.  So do us a solid and help support our arts and crafts habit -- if you are going to buy something from DSS, do it through Not-So-SAHM!

no, not going to roll it into a ball to make a bowl.  i'm making an island.

try a little fingerpainting first.

the Cinco de Mayo pirate ship.

dinghies

these colors will go with everything, right?

BioColor Paint 16oz. - Set of 11 BioColor does it all! It's so versatile - use with brushes spatulas or our paint accessories. It spreads and adheres easily to paper plastic wood metal cardboard. It shines brilliantly when dry and won't crack or fade with age! Use for fabric painting sticker art and marbling projects or make multi-colored putty!

Mod Podge - Gloss - 16 oz Create groovy crafts in a flash with this 3-in-1 glue sealer and finish! Quick-dries clear on decoupage collages and albums for a glossy polished look. Glues to a variety of surfaces. 16 oz.

It's T-Shirt Time: BioColor Fabric Stenciling

Mom has been seeing lots of cool DIY screenprinting projects lately, but knew we're probably a bit on the young side to tackle that yet.  But our BioColor kit from Discount School Supply came with fabric medium and she thought that we might be able to swing something with that.  We had pretty good luck doing some fingerpainted stenciling a while back, so we decided to try something similar with BioColors and fabric.  The fabric medium is super easy to use -- just mix 1 part fabric medium with 4 parts BioColor.  We used DSS's Nancy Bottles for the mixing and roughly marked off five equal parts on the side with a permanent marker.

We took some of my plain t-shirts that I've almost outgrown and slipped them over a cardboard tray.  We also slid a piece of wax paper in between just to make sure no paint would seep through the top layer onto the back of the shirt.  Then mom taped down a plastic stencil on top, making sure to tape a large square around the stencil so that we didn't paint around the stencil, too.  We then used sponge rollers to roll paint over the stencil onto the shirt.  This worked pretty well, but the rollers soaked up a lot of the paint.  So we ended up using some paint brushes as well.

We let them dry for a few hours and then mom peeled the stencils off -- she suggests not letting them dry too long so that the stencils don't stick to the shirt.  Then we let the shirts dry overnight.  The next day, mom put them in the dryer by themselves for about 20 minutes.  Then we washed and dried them again.

We think they came out great!  Some of the images didn't show up well -- the ones with many little lines close together.  But I still know which one has ships on it and that's my favorite.  I was really into doing this even though I had a hard time not getting paint everywhere.  Once I dripped paint all over the side of one of my shirts though, I decided to follow mom's direction a bit more.  Cami didn't want anything to do with it, but she changed her tune once the shirts were all finished up.  That girl loves clothes.  We think some randomly dotted t-shirts with BioColor neon paint would be right up her alley for spring 2012.

Apparently you can also do some fabric stenciling using freezer paper -- check out the Artful Parent's posts on this.  Looks pretty snazzy.  

Yo:  We are now Discount School Supply affiliates and the links below to DSS are affiliate links.  If you click on any of these links (or the general DSS link on the right hand side of our blog) and make a purchase, we will receive a small percentage of the sale from DSS.  So do us a solid and help support our arts and crafts habit -- if you are going to buy something from DSS, do it through Not-So-SAHM!  Scroll down for links to purchase our BioColor favorites.

AND BioColor is now 15% off (so are several other paints at DSS) -- just use the code SBPAINT at checkout before April 30th!

mom's super exact marking

oops

before the dryer

all finished 

it's a little tight (and not in that like "man, that shirt is tight" way), but i think it's hipster

cam's hot pink chopper

accessorizing with new sandals and old mittens