Bird houses are a very hot item. Everyone loves bird houses. But not everyone has decorative bird houses! If you are crafty, you should try your hand at decorating bird houses. You can keep them for your own collection, give the bird houses away as gifts (bird houses make great Mother’s Day gifts or Father’s Day gifts!), or you can get into the business of selling bird houses!
Before you decorate your bird house, you have to actually have a bird house to decorate. You can buy a wide variety of unfinished bird houses at any craft store or hardware store. There are wooden bird houses, metal bird houses, even clay bird houses. Any of these bird houses can be decorated. There are also bird house kits that you can buy to make your own bird house. If you are very crafty you can always make your very own bird houses using any material that you want.
There are endless ways to decorate bird houses. The obvious way to decorate a bird house is with paint. But don’t just slap on a coat of color. Paint your bird houses in fun prints or designs. You could make a hippie bird house using fluorescent paint and making a tie dye or psychedelic design. Or you can make a garden bird house by painting flowers. If you like stripes then paint stripes! If you like dots then paint dots! Look at magazines to give you ideas on prints and color schemes. Then get your paint and paint brushes out and get busy!
Other ways you can decorate a bird house is with mosaic art. You can buy tiles or glass beads and glue them to the bird house with waterproof glue (see my waterproof glass glue recipe here). Or you can use stones, shells, buttons, bottle caps or whatever you can think of for your mosaic art. You can even use things like broken glass. Breaking sentimental plates or glasses and using them for mosaic art is a great way to keep the glassware but to make space in your cabinets! Break them up and glue them to a bird house! Just be careful that you do not cut yourself in the process. Always break the glass inside a bag that is covered by a towel (then tap with a hammer) and sand the edges (wear gloves while sanding).
You can also decorate bird houses by doing decoupage art or paper mache art. For decoupage art, cut out pictures you like from a magazine and glue them to the bird house. You can also print photos on your printer and use those photos. Then glue the photos and magazine pictures to the bird house using decoupage glue (see my recipe for decoupage glue here). For paper mache bird houses, you can cover a plain bird house with the paper to give it a paper mache look. Then you will have a good, strong bird house that birds can actually use yet it will look like paper mache (see one of my paper mache recipes here). For both decoupage art bird houses and paper mache bird houses you will want to waterproof them by adding a coat of waterproof varnish to your finished work of art. You can buy waterproof varnish at Walmart or any paint store or craft store.
Once you start making decorative bird houses you will find that everyone you know will want one. Give your bird houses as gift or start your very own bird house business! You can sell them at craft fairs or farmer’s markets or even at yard sales. Or you can sell them online on sites like Etsy.com and eBay.com.
