I love birds and enjoy feeding them throughout the winter months. I bought this wood birdhouse at a thrift store, and upcycle it into a beautiful piece to hang up on the tree in my front yard.
The first thing I did was apply a couple of coats of white acrylic paint ( Snow White by Apple Barrel) to cover the color it originally was. If you upcycle a birdhouse of your own, you can paint it any color you like, I just chose white because it matches some beautiful napkins a friend sent me. Once I finished applying the 2nd coat of paint, I used my heat gun to speed up the drying time.
After the paint was fully dry, I applied a coat of Mod Podge onto the areas that I was going to decoupage. I used my handy heat gun again to dry the coat of Mod Podge.
The next step was pulling the ply layers off of the napkin so that I could use only the decorated layer for decoupage. I cut the napkin to the size I wanted and placed it on the back side of the house. I put a piece of parchment paper over it and used my mini iron (link at bottom) to activate the Mod Podge and adhere the napkin on as smoothly as possible. I repeated this step for each side. Once I applied the napkin onto the front, I trimmed out the hole to the entrance of the house. You can use a small piece of sandpaper or a nail file to sand the edges smooth.
I then cut the trim of the napkin and used the same technique to apply the trim to the edges of the roof on the house. The trim added a very beautiful detail to my project.
For the roof of the birdhouse, I used these corrugated metal pieces and attached them with hot glue. (Link for glue gun and glue sticks below.)
I love how this birdhouse turned out, and it is now out in a tree in our front yard! There are so many ways to upcycle a wood birdhouse, and if you make one sure to share your pretty creation in my Facebook community!
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Patsy Hensley says
Bird house turn our beautiful
Diane Rome says
I surely turned out beautiful Annie and would love to make one of my own….so when asked by friends i can say proudly inspired by Annie
paintedlady says
Thank you, you’re so sweet Diane!
paintedlady says
Thank you so much Patsy!
Pat Wear says
I loved the way this turned out I tried it myself, and they came out so pretty! Thanks for your inspiration Annie!
paintedlady says
I’m so glad that they came out pretty! 🥰