Build Your Own Birdhouses

This adorable birdhouse is the culmination of a few different craft techniques: creating floral wall art from toilet paper rolls, making a beaded  accent charm, and painting, stenciling and decorating a birdhouse.

What makes this wall decoration work is repetition of color, shape and pattern.

The How-to

How to Make Toilet Paper Roll Flowers

1. Mix red and white tempura and paint the toilet paper rolls. Let it dry. Repeat as is needed to give a nice coverage.

2. Flatten 3 toilet paper rolls lengthwise, and cut them in 1/3 of an inch circular strips.

3. Staple 5 together for the medium sized flower; staple 8 together for a large flower and staple 1 onto the middle of a second ring for the lotus flower bud.

4. These three flowers were originally designed as a mobile where the flowers hang below each other, and the end piece is a grouping of a few beads to give it the weight required to hang straight down.  (Note: toilet paper rolls are very light). I just used simple sewing thread and tied the beaded accent charm * on first, and then looped the thread through each toilet paper roll flower, allowing a bit of spacing in between each flower.  I made a loop at the end of the thread to hang the flower mobile up.

For this wall vignette, I simply ‘draped’ the flowers mobile over the birdhouse.

* How to Make a Beaded Charm

Simple. String several beads of different sizes & materials with compatible colors onto a metal pin and with your jewelry supplies, create a loop at the end of the pin and clip of the excess metal. In this case, I’ve uses a glass bead at the bottom, then a hand-painted wooden bead, a midsized glass bead and a smaller glass bead.

How to Paint a Wooden Birdhouse

1. Decide on a color scheme and style for the house.
We wanted a whimsical, girly design and very pink approach to decorating here. But you might like to choose something more rustic, classic or romantic ! The actual decoration design is up to you.

2. First lightly sand the store-bought birdhouse form. Apply a coat of white as a grounding. We used simple tempura.

3. For the second coat of paint, mix your paint to achieve the right shade. Always remember that paint becomes lighter when dry.

4. We choose to accentuate the shape of the birdhouse with our decorations.

5. Our stencil: we chose the flat end of a pencil to be our stencil. It was lightly dipped in tempura paint to create our polka dots. To create smooth dots, roll your pencil lightly in your fingers when holding it against the surface of the object to be painted. This will create a smooth round edge. 

If …

you are planning to hang your birdhouse outside, place it in a protected area so that the birds will be safe, plus use durable materials that are non-toxic for birds.

Craft Materials Needed

1. Toilet Paper rolls.

2. Tempura paint to paint the rolls.

3. Stapler

4. Beads & thread.

5. Unfinished wooden bird house (Click for 4 pack of quality birdhouses in which birds actually like to nest, but which you can also paint and use inside for decoration. )  For indoor use, you can also use a paper Mache birdhouse kit.

6. Stencils & Paint Brushes.

7. Sealer, acrylics paint & Varnish. Liquitex Acrylics Paint, or even folk art paint, will do the job just fine for a decorative birdhouse that’s mostly kept indoors or protected outside.

Indoor vs.. Outdoor Birdhouses

For a birdhouse you wish to enjoy outdoors, you’ll need completely different materials.  Give your  bird house a (white) base coat to seal the wood.  Then paint over it using either an acrylics paint for detailed decoration, or an outdoor paint in case you do not want to embellish it too much.  If you’ve painted your birdhouse with acrylic paint, you should really give your birdhouse one or two coats of protective varnish at the end.

Note that exterior house paint is much harder to work with than water-based tempura or acrylics. If you use that, you should keep your design simple and perhaps even leave your birdhouse plain after giving it one or two coats of color.  Painting tip: choose painting products (base coat, paint and varnish) which are compatible with each other.

Protect your birdhouse and protect your birds: place the birdhouse where it is a bit protected from the elements and from predator animals.

Additional Resources

Making & Painting Victorian Birdhouses	20 Upscale Homes for Sophisticated Birds	Folk Art Acrylic-Paint Liquitex Acrylics Paint Set
Birdhouse Construction	Birdhouses you can Paint & Decorate	Birdhouses You Can Build in a Day

Build Your Own Birdhouse Kits

There are several styles of ‘Build your own birdhouse’-kits that you can buy.

Tip: If you buy the cheapy ‘build your birdhouse’-kits with the paint included, you are advised to also order an extra tube of white or your favorite color as these kits usually come with way to little paint to cover the whole birdhouse.  Not a problem if you know this in advance and can make up for it.

Also see:  Eco Friendly DIY garden projects Ideas & tutorials,

including a really cute eco-friendly Bird Feeder.