Painted bird houses

Pickles and I have decided to have a theme for our January crafts, birds!

Nik asked to paint a bird house so that the birds in our yard could have a home.
The result is adorable, and we are hearing nothing but good things
 from the bird community. 

All of our local craft stores have a great selection of unpainted bird houses.

We found two houses we liked. One has a normal sized bird hole. 

And the other is a double-decker with a mutant tiny pygmy bird hole.
I don't know what sort of super model bird will live in this home. If we don't see any birds move in within a few weeks the hubs will widen that entrance. 

Materials:

Paints
Something to put the paint on - We used paper plates
Hooks for the tops of the birdhouses
shiny, sparkly items

Tools:

brushes or sponge brushes
glue

I gathered some bird house type colors, sponge brushes and paper plates. 

My intention was to place a base color on both houses
before setting Nik free with the paint. 

It occurred to me at one point that the paint choices I made,
looked as if I was painting houses for bird clowns. 

I repainted the clown cottage a more appropriate color.

After the houses dried I gave Nik a
sponge brush, some paint and let him go.

 

Painting is not really his thing, but Nik was
definitely enjoying the sponge brush.
It helped him make neater designs and cover more area.

Nik kept hearing the birds in the back yard chirping while he was painting.
He insisted,
"Just hold on birdies! Be patient"

I think the paint job Nik did is fabulous.
We let the houses dry for 24 hours.

I decided we needed to add a few things to the houses
to increase the curb appeal. 

I thought that glues and glitters could kill the birds resulting in tons of tiny bird deaths on my hands. I would never be able to sleep at night, so I decided we needed to go organic.
Noodles!

The noodle idea was scrapped after my husband reminded me that I would need to use glue to make the noodles stick, and I didn't want the birds to accidentally eat glue. So we glued inedible objects instead.

I know that birds are attracted to flashy stuff, like me at Target.
So I just brought out a few fake jewels and glass thumbprints.

Nik glued our shiny objects on.
After that we set the houses to the side to dry.

Pickles was super proud of this project, and he really loved doing it. 

 My husband placed a few hooks on the top of the houses
to give us something to hang them with.
We used jute to hang the houses in trees.